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Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

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Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#531

Post by remflight »

iudqnolq wrote: post #489
remflight wrote: post #483

Twitter can’t give Musk the data he needs to determine fake accounts. It’s obvious that while Twitter does some work to detect fake accounts, they probably only go after low hanging fruit. Twitter is balancing investment costs vs impact to the platform and obviously they are coming in light. Everyone that uses Twitter knows it has a bot problem. If Musk’s team does a deeper dive than Twitter is willing to invest in a…

> If Musk’s team does a deeper dive than Twitter is willing to invest in and determines that the number of bots is material, it calls into question the entire financial model of Twitter. Customers will demand refunds and earnings will have to be restated going back years. It’s going to be a nuclear financial bomb. This doesn't make sense. "Material" is a term of art defined with regard to the current deal, there's no…

Of course it makes sense. “Material” is a financial term that is used all the time. It’s not a surprising term at all and fits here.

Twitter doesn’t have to be caught in a lie. They can just be caught with having a materially different numbers of fake accounts from their stated numbers.

If 25% of the amount you paid to Twitter for ads went to bots and fake accounts, you don’t think that you deserve a refund? You don’t think advertisers would take advantage of that to get refunds? You don’t think the SEC would be interested in this?

The whole point is Musk’s team is going to dig up stuff that Twitter won’t want to fix because the cost to find and track it will overweigh the amount of money they make probably. But it will have ramifications in terms of things like refunds and customers leaving the platform entirely. It will make them look really bad. It’s inevitable.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#532

Post by remflight »

ceejayoz wrote: post #487
remflight wrote: post #483

Twitter can’t give Musk the data he needs to determine fake accounts. It’s obvious that while Twitter does some work to detect fake accounts, they probably only go after low hanging fruit. Twitter is balancing investment costs vs impact to the platform and obviously they are coming in light. Everyone that uses Twitter knows it has a bot problem. If Musk’s team does a deeper dive than Twitter is willing to invest in a…

> Everyone that uses Twitter knows it has a bot problem. Which is precisely the problem with signing a "I'm buying you for $44B" and then claiming you had no idea they had so many bots to back out of it.

Your argument doesn’t hold water. You can have a sense of the amount of bots but if it’s wildly off, then of course it’s going to be shocking.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#533

Post by joshuamorton »

h2odragon wrote: post #148
petilon wrote: post #53

This is good for Twitter, and good for the world. Musk's misguided approach to free speech, which says anything that is not explicitly illegal is allowed, would have made Twitter an open forum for spreading lies and hate. My guess is Musk never intended to buy Twitter. He needed an excuse for dumping billions of dollars' worth of TSLA at its peak (while at the same time faulting Bill Gates for shorting TSLA), and his…

> Musk's misguided approach to free speech, which says anything that is not explicitly illegal is allowed, would have made Twitter an open forum for spreading lies and hate. Twitter is of course currently known as a source of Truth and Harmony. "anything not illegal is allowed" sounds decent to me; if you want stuff illegal, make it illegal. If you want unwritten laws dreamt up by anonymous elites and enforced for ra…

So when you say anything not illegal is allowed, do you mean that I can post porn anywhere? That spammers and bots can't be banned?

Any remotely reasonable approach here has the state deciding which attributes can be used for moderation decision and which can't, which also isn't feasible.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#534

Post by dinobones »

mzs wrote: post #190
pryce wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone's stock is as incredibly overinflated as Tesla has been for so long, choosing the most effective way to liquidate stock without triggering a run becomes a social engineering problem with the incentive of a multi-billion dollar payoff. Honestly I think other people trying to read this situation in some way that ignores a multi billion dollar incentive just sitting there is utterly naive.

You say social engineering, I say criminal fraud.

You say OSINT, I say, you just used google with quotes.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#535

Post by StopHammoTime »

chernevik wrote: post #264

The filed letter ( https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000110465922... ) isn't the knockdown argument I would be expecting. Musk is saying, you haven't demonstrated your numbers are accurate. But having signed the merger agreement and waived due diligence, I think he needs to demonstrate that they are _not_ accurate. Complaining Twitter rate-limited his API access (which would be very foolish on their par…

During a merger, discovery is absolutely a right the purchasing side has. The target company should open its books, your assumption about them not disclosing is incorrect.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#536

Post by iudqnolq »

remflight wrote: post #531
iudqnolq wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Musk’s team does a deeper dive than Twitter is willing to invest in and determines that the number of bots is material, it calls into question the entire financial model of Twitter. Customers will demand refunds and earnings will have to be restated going back years. It’s going to be a nuclear financial bomb. This doesn't make sense. "Material" is a term of art defined with regard to the current deal, there's no…

Of course it makes sense. “Material” is a financial term that is used all the time. It’s not a surprising term at all and fits here. Twitter doesn’t have to be caught in a lie. They can just be caught with having a materially different numbers of fake accounts from their stated numbers. If 25% of the amount you paid to Twitter for ads went to bots and fake accounts, you don’t think that you deserve a refund? You don’…

> “Material” is a financial term that is used all the time. It’s not a surprising term at all and fits here.

Yes, but it's only well-defined with regard to specific circumstances. It makes no sense to say something material to this deal will inherently be material to completely different circumstances like the contracts signed with advertisers or users.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#537

Post by hermanradtke »

starkd wrote: post #501
timsneath wrote: post #17

It seems apparent to this observer that he developed cold feet pretty fast after an impetuous decision, and has been looking for any reason to back out of it since then. The spam accounts angle seems like a convenient scapegoat, rather than a real surprise to him. He's clearly eccentric in his approach to decision making: I don't think any Harvard Business School course will teach "the Musk Principles". But it's uncl…

The twitter board has already announced it intends to litigate this. And they are not after just the $1B fee. That might be what Mr. Musk had in mind when he mentioned he was lawyering up in a few tweets awhile back. Even though he waved due diligence, that might not clear twitter from having lied about the bot problem. I suspect this is going into months of litigation. Perhaps Twitter will be willing to accept a low…

He didn’t waive due diligence. He chose to forego any due diligence before making an offer.

This isn’t like buying a house…

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#538

Post by ceejayoz »

remflight wrote: post #532
ceejayoz wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone that uses Twitter knows it has a bot problem. Which is precisely the problem with signing a "I'm buying you for $44B" and then claiming you had no idea they had so many bots to back out of it.

Your argument doesn’t hold water. You can have a sense of the amount of bots but if it’s wildly off, then of course it’s going to be shocking.

He opted to buy the company, and very shortly afterwards said the 5% number - which they've consistently submitted to the SEC for years - is obviously wrong.

Unless he can convincingly explain how he went from naively believing the 5% number to certain it's massively and fraudulently incorrect - in a matter of weeks and with no new information - to the court, he's pretty fucked here.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#539

Post by perardi »

toast0 wrote: post #477
frollo wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla is a car company. Tesla is a very complex financial operation which, sometimes, sells some cars. From Musk's point of view it's working exactly as planned.

>> Tesla is a car company. > Tesla is a very complex financial operation which, sometimes, sells some cars. That's not that unique, my understanding is most of the major car companies are primarily in the business of auto financing, but they make cars to give people something to finance.

I am not entirely sure where that comes from.

Let’s take a look at GM, as those numbers are readily available.

GM Financial: $13.419 billion in 2021 GM: $127 billion in 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Financial

Seems to be a lot more revenue coming from the cars than the financing…

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#540

Post by vkou »

CRUDite wrote: post #447
timsneath wrote: post #17

It seems apparent to this observer that he developed cold feet pretty fast after an impetuous decision, and has been looking for any reason to back out of it since then. The spam accounts angle seems like a convenient scapegoat, rather than a real surprise to him. He's clearly eccentric in his approach to decision making: I don't think any Harvard Business School course will teach "the Musk Principles". But it's uncl…

He has made billions using twitter spamming Tesla and doge. It’s a playground for for the guy. And therefore cheap at almost any price. But of course why pay more than needed. On a more semi serious note: it must seem ludicrously easy for the guy. He has laid it all out: Mars needs: VTOL rockets since no infrastructure Methane due to atmospheric constraints Tunnels for transport see also infrastructure Starlink see a…

> Direct democracy via twitter

He doesn't run any of his firms with direct democracy, why on earth would he run his Martian kingdom as one?

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