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

arstechnica.com

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

#151

Post by fooey »

nomel wrote: post #14
jcranmer wrote: 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.

There's a whole assumption that bots are a net negative to the platforms value besides any arguments over how many of them there are.

As a human, it's annoying to get get a reply notification only to discover it was bot spam, but from the platform perspective that bot just created user activity and content for you for free.

I have a theory that the most embarrassing thing to come out of this might be that Twitter doesn't really care about bots much more than issuing platitudes that they care about bots to assuage the user base.

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

#152

Post by TechBro8615 »

jscottmiller wrote: post #147
762236 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>They repeatedly demonstrate that they are a company of bullies, with how they ban people from their service that don't conform to the left orthodoxy. So the manner in which they conduct their private business, which is well within the rule of law, makes them ineligible for protection from those violating securities and contract law?

It’s not a violation of contract law to sue the other party. That lawsuit may find that the complainant did violate contract law, but the act of bringing the lawsuit is not in itself a violation.

So at this point, pending adjudication, Twitter has not been “denied protection.” The court is the protection. The two parties are suing each other, and the court will decide the appropriate remedies for whatever each of the parties has been “denied” due to any willful breach of contract by the other.

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

#153

Post by jjoonathan »

jjeaff wrote: post #105

Imagine this whole ordeal playing out on a house that was not listed for sale. The buyer starts harassing the homeowner to sell to them, they say no, so he buys up the mortgage lender and tries to force a sale. His antics are hurting the home's value so you relent to selling and give him an as-is sale contract, which he signs and gives you 24 hrs to respond or he will try to force a sale. All the while, this is of co…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WShMzwT-nM

For best experience, read it with the Benny Hill theme in a background tab.

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

#154

Post by HeXetic »

iasay wrote: post #123
dragontamer wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who could possibly be on the side of the buyer? Except you can just buy up supporters by gaslighting huge masses of people on Twitter. The house in question. Its so ridiculous. Musk's popularity is largely *BECAUSE* of his Twitter antics. So this "buyer" is basically someone who has come to house-parties / benefited from the house in question for the last decade. And the people arguing against the (current owners)…

If his popularity is due to what he posts on twitter it would appear that a large proportion of the human race are deranged morons.

With everything that's happened in the past decade, don't we know that already by know?

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

#155

Post by Volundr »

moralestapia wrote: post #135
dragontamer wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who could possibly be on the side of the buyer? Except you can just buy up supporters by gaslighting huge masses of people on Twitter. The house in question. Its so ridiculous. Musk's popularity is largely *BECAUSE* of his Twitter antics. So this "buyer" is basically someone who has come to house-parties / benefited from the house in question for the last decade. And the people arguing against the (current owners)…

Quoted post unavailable.

I don't think anyone is confused on this point.

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

#156

Post by rchaud »

koheripbal wrote: post #114
mcguire wrote: post #41

" 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, Twitter said. "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. " If that's t…

No, because waiving due diligence does not mean the seller is immune to claims if they knowingly provided false data.

That will be almost impossible to prove. Especially as he provided an all-cash, take-it-or-leave-it offer based on publicly available financial data. He has access to lawyers and financial advisors to warn him against potential misstatemrnts on Twitter's part.

If they signed off on it, he has no case. If they warned him against it, and he went ahead anyway, he also has no case.

The judge will rightfully wonder how this isn't anything other than a attention-hungry blowhard trying to get out of scoring the most comical own goal in business history.

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

#157

Post by simiones »

hartator wrote: post #132
nojito wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that matters when he waived due diligence. Again all of that information is public knowledge through twitter's SEC filings.

> None of that matters when he waived due diligence. Musk didn't though: “Despite public speculation on this point, Mr. Musk did not waive his right to review Twitter’s data and information simply because he chose not to seek this data and information before entering into the Merger Agreement. In fact, he negotiated access and information rights within the Merger Agreement precisely so that he could review data and i…

> Can you point to the paragraph where Musk waive due diligence?

Here it is mentioned in his own legal filing [0]:

> 60. Believing that due diligence processes can be costly and inefficient, the Musk Parties instead focused on bargaining for contractual representations that the information they relied upon in deciding to acquire Twitter is accurate.

Also, by definition, due diligence is something that happens before signing a contract.

[0] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/musk-...

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

#158

Post by megablast »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #122
benj111 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reach the opposite conclusion. He offers to buy twitter on a whim, then changes his mind after signing a contract. That doesn't really seem like a good way of getting to the top.

People are missing the obvious story. He locked himself into a price, then the price of things crashed. It has crashed so much that he's honestly better off just walking away and losing the billion dollars... but he doesn't want to lose a billion dollars so he's gonna do whatever he can do to get out of it.

He could lose a lot more than a billion.

He could lose the entire amount he pledged.

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

#159

Post by megablast »

convery wrote: post #10
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #7

> "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.

Completely wrong.

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

#160

Post by megablast »

pauldenton wrote: post #27
jjeaff wrote: 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

He was allowed to do due diligence, he chose not too. People said it was dumb at the time.
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