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Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot
11–20 of 585 posts
Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot
#12> "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.
That's not what the SEC filings say. The SEC filings say that up to 5% of the number of monetizable daily active users (i.e., the number of users after eliminating bots) may be bots--or, in other words, the techniques that Twitter uses to detect bots have up to a 5% false negative rate.
No one is saying that 5% of Twitter's users is bots, except for when Musk is trying to put those words into Twitter's beak.
Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot
#13Musk seems like a smart guy who got overconfident and out of his area of expertise and made a series of incredibly stupid decisions. Pretty much every legal and financial professional without a vested Musk related interest seems to think similarly. Matt Levine has been lights out on this topic. Everyone knows his bot claims are just FUD to try and weasel out of writing a check he no longer has the guts to cash with c…
Do you mean he only recently got overconfident? Just a reminder that he already got fined $40 million for his "going private at 420" joke.
Just to put this in perspective: if your net worth is $100,000, this is the equivalent of being fined $14.
(Based on Elon's net worth of $278 billion, according to Google)
Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot
#14I 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.
Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot
#15I 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…
> arguing that Twitter lied about its numbers for years specifically so that someone would buy it at an inflated price?
On one hand, venture-funded hockeystick-startups like Twitter definitely aim for a quick exit to make cash, so it's not totally out of the blue. On the other hand, Twitter is publicly traded and therefore already had its exit.
Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot
#16I 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 users see ads, which makes them monetizable users.
Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot
#17I 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…
Wouldn’t the first count apply to anyone interested in buying shares in Twitter? Artificially inflating the mDAU figure makes the investment appear more attractive and valuable than it really is.
Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot
#18I 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…
> 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.
What is that commonly-used aphorism? "One man's trash is another man's treasure"? Like, even if this is true, Musk didn't do (and subsequently waived) due diligence.
> No, really, this is the allegation
No further comment on it.
> Count 2 is that Twitter committed [Texas fraud statute] by lying when it offered its shares. It's shotgun-pled, so I don't know which specific statements are supposed to be wrong, but I'm imagining it's basically the previous count recast under a different statute.
If it's due to Texas laws, is the appropriate jurisdiction is the Texas courts or... oh, he's trying to claim that the case should be heard in a federal court (for diversity reasons). Good luck though Musk.
> Count 3 says that Twitter broke the contract by failing to provide information.
What information? The contract is already in the public, but okay you want to waste court time.
> Count 4 says that Twitter broke the contract by instituting a hiring freeze.
Twitter could just point to its peers like Google, Meta and Microsoft.
> Count 5 is pretty please declare that Twitter lying about mDAUs is a materially adverse event that is cause to break the contract.
Yeah, at this point I'm convinced that Musk wants to just waste everyone's time, especially after the chancery court denied his petition to schedule the hearing next year.
Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot
#19plot twist: the spam analysis tool is correct, and Elon is actually a robot, ala Stephen Byerley in Asimov's "Evidence".
His Tweets are all done with an iPhone, as Twitter allows you to see what client a tweet was made from. The only way bot behavior could be done on a smartphone, is if the phone is an iOS virtual machine, and the tweets are programmatically generated using some algo.
Re: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot
#20I 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... arguing that Twitter lied about its numbers for years specifically so that someone would buy it at an inflated price?
Not a lawyer, so could you explain why this is banana-pants insanity? There's malicious fraud (unlikely) and then there's the more likely case of under-investing in bot-detection and expunging efforts, e.g. "in favor of other priorities", to keep DAUs and subsequently valuations high for a potential sale.