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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

#191

Post by vkou »

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.

It would definitely appear that our monkey brains aren't very good at reasoning through social interactions that happen through mass media.

Whether or not this makes most of us deranged morons or not is in the eye of the beholder.

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

#192

Post by suresk »

hunterb123 wrote: post #182
pcmoney wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally never claimed this was accurate and even said their methodology could be wrong. Nothing in the contract says anything about bots. They don’t have to prove anything at all.

> They literally never claimed this was accurate > and even said their methodology could be wrong Yeah that's my point, their supplied number is unusable for investors, advertisers, etc. Combine that with the bot experiences on Twitter, the 3rd party estimates of 10-20% if looks way off. I don't see why NOW anyone would trust 5%. Diligence has NOW been done and that " methodology could be wrong " looks likely. -- EDI…

But that's the whole point - Musk waived his right to do due diligence, so he is pointing at this statement being wrong (and not unusable) as his way out.

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

#193

Post by bilsbie »

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…

A publicly traded company is nothing like a house. I say no to this analogy.

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

#194

Post by bilsbie »

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.

Welcome to earth?

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

#195

Post by dahdum »

kergonath wrote: post #62
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Twitter's lawsuit mentions this, stating only they know who is monetizable. IIRC Musk's lawyers deliberately push the same false equivalency in their filing.

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

#196

Post by kentm »

siliconc0w wrote: post #93

Musk has a chance if he can show that Twitter knowingly mislead the public about the bot %. It sounds like their methodology was indeed pretty weak, arguably deliberately so, and they had people on staff that should've known this would produce poor estimates with a large margin on error.

Their stated methodology isn't weak though. It's pretty good actually,

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

#197

Post by muglug »

762236 wrote: post #187
muglug wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact you think that Twitter supports "left orthodoxy" just means the conservatives have successfully moved the goalposts to make you believe they're the real victims. Twitter is full of very prominent hard-right voices. Douglas Murray! Charles Murray! Tucker Carlson! Dave Rubin! Ben Shapiro! Edit: Bannon! Paul Joseph Watson! Jack Posobiec!

I see lots of people getting banned for, e.g., being gender critical, or for sharing the actual stats from vaccine trials when those stats make the vaccines look bad. Twitter seems to respond to coordinated complaints against conservatives. My guess is that you can get Twitter to silence a conservative that doesn't have too many followers through these ambushes, but you can't get Twitter to silence established and we…

I know leftists that have been banned from Twitter too.

I'd encourage you to read this thread about moderation on social media platforms from the former CEO of Reddit: https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440

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

#198

Post by evan_ »

eastbound wrote: post #84
zinekeller wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are a monetizable user on Twitter if you just log in and read tweets. Actually, even logged-out users (until they forced everyone to log in to read timelines) are monetizable, so Musk is really trying to make something to get out.

I’m surprised that someone clever enough to run a business, takes that excuse to get out of a deal. He must have been tired. Any businessman who gets into such a position, even by mistake, would have at least taken this opportunity to require Twitter’s methodology on counting bots an expose its flaws. The claim would be something tangible like “This account is a bot and your criteria falsely counts it as a user.” Not…

Another explanation could be, he’s not actually that good at running a business

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

#199

Post by Banana699 »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#200

Post by dahdum »

codingdave wrote: post #106
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 don't honestly believe either side cares about the merits of the legal case - this is all just a very public and showy exercise to negotiate on a new price during a settlement.

Twitter has the facts and the law on their side, so they most certainly care about the merits.
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