Live data from Hacker News

Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

arstechnica.com

61–70 of 585 posts

Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

#61
post #50
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose he could save some billions.

It seems to me that any reduction in price would also cause a reduction in value, no? I.e pay less because it’s worth less?

Yes, but if he is taking it private that doesn't change anything.

I have no idea what is his plan to make money with Twitter, but that is why I'm not multi-billionaire.

Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is a public company (and has been for 9 years), and has maintained the 5% mDAU disclaimer in its required annual reports for years. I don't know off-hand how long it's been doing so, but probably at least 4 or 5 years. The allegation is saying not only that Twitter has been lying about that number--for years, on documents that land it in legal hot water if it's been lying--but that it was doing so specificall…

FWIW, academic research has questioned the 5% number for years. USC and IU put out a report 5 years ago that believed the upper bound for fake accounts was 15%[0]. This isn't a new allegation. 0: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-ac...

From your source:

> our estimates suggest that between 9% and 15% of active Twitter accounts are bots

From Twitter: “roughly 5% of our monetizable daily users are bots”.

Both can be true at the same time, and it does not mean that Twitter lied.

Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

#63
post #16

I find it rather ridiculous and in bad faith that Musk is harping on the bot issue for 2 reasons. First, it wouldn't matter anyway. He signed away any and all rights to due diligence in the agreement. And secondly, it's completely impossible for any outside analysis to determine the number of active users on Twitter because most active Twitter users don't tweet or interact in anyway. They just read tweets and those u…

"He signed away any and all rights to due diligence in the agreement." Why do more fraudsters not use contracts If people can sign away due diligence, sign up for a Diamond, get a Lemon, and have no recourse, surely scammers would be doing this instead of structuring their scam in a way that has the potential of sending them to jail

I mean, that’s how a lot of immature markets without regulations work, until laws are added to say “you can’t do that for this kind of transaction”.

That’s why many states have lemon laws for used car sales, to prevent exactly that kind of behavior in that market.

Sales of corporations often don’t have consumer protection style regulations, because consumers don’t often buy corporations.

The assumption is if you’re spending enough money to buy a corporation, you’re a big boy and can pay a lawyer to review your contracts.

So, if you’re spending $54B to buy a company, you should have your lawyers closely review the terms of the contract. Every lawyer I’ve heard that reviewed the contract Musk signed is gobsmacked by its terms and would have strongly discouraged Musk from signing the contract as written, because it’s so one sided in Twitter’s favor.

Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

#64
post #16

I find it rather ridiculous and in bad faith that Musk is harping on the bot issue for 2 reasons. First, it wouldn't matter anyway. He signed away any and all rights to due diligence in the agreement. And secondly, it's completely impossible for any outside analysis to determine the number of active users on Twitter because most active Twitter users don't tweet or interact in anyway. They just read tweets and those u…

"He signed away any and all rights to due diligence in the agreement." Why do more fraudsters not use contracts If people can sign away due diligence, sign up for a Diamond, get a Lemon, and have no recourse, surely scammers would be doing this instead of structuring their scam in a way that has the potential of sending them to jail

You don’t deserve the downvotes here. Agreeing to buy Twitter as-is does not absolve them if they’re found to have misrepresented what they’re selling which is what the legal angle they’re gunning for is. I don’t buy it but it at least logically follows.

Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

#65
post #16

I find it rather ridiculous and in bad faith that Musk is harping on the bot issue for 2 reasons. First, it wouldn't matter anyway. He signed away any and all rights to due diligence in the agreement. And secondly, it's completely impossible for any outside analysis to determine the number of active users on Twitter because most active Twitter users don't tweet or interact in anyway. They just read tweets and those u…

And thirdly, his boast was that he would solve the bot problem and that would make twitter better. More bots means there's more room for him to improve the company - should be a good thing.

Disclaimer: Just speculating with your scenario. I know nothing on this subject and my understanding of this deal is that of mild curiosity at best.

Fair point. Though i would think bots still affect price, right? Ie lets say it's 100% fake right now, what would the value be? Lets say $0 for easy math. Buying it at $54.20 means he has to at least clean up the bots enough to make it worth, at least, $54 to regain his investment.

So while i think your point is interesting, if bot count affects price then i feel one could argue there's a bot threshold whereby he would be over valuing it.

In your scenario the sweet spot would be if it was just enough bots to make $54 a fair price, but also lots of bots in total so that he could "fix the problem" and increase value.

Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

#66
post #43

I wish this whole saga ended, and Musk buys reddit instead. This current saga is pure entertainment, which will end up in some kind of settlement and will leave the lawyers a lot richer.

Musk buying Reddit would turn it into corporate 4chan even faster than is already happening.

Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

#67
post #10

> "To the contrary, Musk forwent all due diligence—giving Twitter twenty-four hours to accept his take-it-or-leave-it offer before he would present it directly to Twitter's stockholders," Twitter wrote. Bot/spam account analysis is just trying to do PR spin. Musk has no legal standing to use any of that to back out of the merger. > The five-day trial is now scheduled to begin on October 17 So we will see about 2 more…

> Musk has no legal standing to use any of that to back out of the merger. The claim is that Twitters SEC filings had bots at ~5%, and Musk made the investment based on that. From the leaked recordings of staff, everyone knew that the percentage was much higher.

I made a bad analogy before about this, if Twitter were a house Musk was buying, he waived the right to back out of the deal based on home inspections (bots/spam accounts). He still can analyze bots/spam as much as he wants (as he should) but from the article it has no basis in the legal contract signed.

> The merger agreement contained no references to false or spam accounts, and Musk didn't ask Twitter for any information to verify the number of spam accounts before signing the merger deal.

Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

#69
post #8

I think Musk's counterclaims are more interesting than Twitter's response. Here's the summary of the five counterclaims: * Twitter committed fraud by lying to the SEC about the mDAU numbers with the intent of inducing Musk to buy Twitter at an inflated price. No, really, this is the allegation (see paragraphs 202-206). * Count 2 is that Twitter committed [Texas fraud statute] by lying when it offered its shares. It's…

This provides a lot of insight into how that man got to the top. He clearly has no qualms about lying and bullshitting his way into and out of anything and no amount of proof to the contrary will ever get him to admit he was wrong. I guess this is similar to the "reality distortion field" people claim Jobs had. Except the examples given there were more of him not believing people who said something couldn't be done.

Jobs’ RDF was a manifestation of his charisma: he could make people think something really hard was actually easy (when dealing with engineers and designers) or the other way around (when dealing with customers).

Jobs did bullshit, but AFAIK more on the design and marketing side than on the business side (give or take the backdated stock option thing and his first stint at Apple, when he wasn’t in control). Certainly nothing like Musk’s shenanigans.

Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

#70
post #14
post #8

I think Musk's counterclaims are more interesting than Twitter's response. Here's the summary of the five counterclaims: * Twitter committed fraud by lying to the SEC about the mDAU numbers with the intent of inducing Musk to buy Twitter at an inflated price. No, really, this is the allegation (see paragraphs 202-206). * Count 2 is that Twitter committed [Texas fraud statute] by lying when it offered its shares. It's…

> I still can't get over the banana-pants insanity of the first count As someone who's unfamiliar with this, could you explain what's banana-pants insane about a company inflating their hard-to-discover numbers, for profit? I thought that was, unfortunately, banana-pants standard? For example, the fiction that is Twitter or Reddit's user count.

The fact that musk tweeted that he was buying Twitter to fix the bot problem.

So the fact that he's using his reason for buying to try and get out of buying seems... Insane.

Post reply on HN