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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

#331

Post by biomcgary »

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…

Not the best analogy. In many (most?) US states, the buyer can just walk away from purchasing a house at any time for just the earnest money, typically 1%.

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

#332

Post by nyokodo »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #298
ctvo wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But like I mentioned above if owning a profitable mine of some type was all it took to be an entrepreneur at Musk's level we would be drowning in them and he wouldn't be such a big deal in the first place. I don't have an opinion on how big being born wealthy plays in his success. Just curious though -- how many profitable mines do you think are in operation and how many people do you think own them as a percentage…

What level of profit did the mine bring in? That's the real question that I've never seen an answer to. You can own a gold mine in the California mountains and come out of it with nothing but debt. It would sound like you're rich in the newspaper stories, though.

> What level of profit did the mine bring in? That's the real question that I've never seen an answer to.

Who has time for ascertaining the facts when there are politically derived narratives to promote.

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

#333

Post by vehementi »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #214
megablast wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He could lose a lot more than a billion. He could lose the entire amount he pledged.

Possibly. But it seem unlikely. The deal explicitly says he can back out for a billion dollars.

Such confidence without reading it

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

#335

Post by gfodor »

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…

The point to me seems to be to set up things where this won’t go to court: if the primary claim is that Twitter misstated mDAU, the downside risk to Twitter is far greater than to Musk (I think) to have that fact finding occur. If it turns out the court agrees with Musk, then in one swoop the deal falls through, Musk is vindicated, the reputation of Twitter’s entire executive leadership and board is permanently damaged, and the market will punish the hell out of the stock due to the first and higher order impact of this on their valuation.

The choice for Twitter boils down to what level of price cut are they willing to make to remove that possibility.

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

#336

Post by vehementi »

hartator wrote: post #54
jcranmer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. "In its disclosures, Twitter claims to have nearly 238 million monetizable daily active users (“mDAU”) who participate on the platform, and tells its investors that this userbase metric is a bellwether for its ability to generate revenue and the “best way to measure [Twitter’s] success . . . .…

That logic is nonsense, 3rd party observers have no way to know what twitter counts as a daily active user. They *could not possibly* make any such estimate.

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

#337

Post by thaumasiotes »

dragontamer wrote: post #319
thaumasiotes wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think he was buying it in good faith. > He believed he had "bought the dip" in stocks. He had bought 3bn worth, announced that he had bought some stock and made 1bn in a day on it - worlds smartest man everyone. > Once he realised he wasnt buying the dip but was actually holding the bag, deal cancelled. But these concepts don't even apply to taking a company private. Once you do that, there is no stock price. You…

Lets say you promise to buy a car in 30 days at a dealership (fully fictitious. This obviously can't really happen in real life). You sign a contract saying "I promise to pay $20,000 for this car and I'll be back in 30 days". --------- What happens if, within those 30 days, the car market collapses and the cars are now worth $15,000 ? Well, if you were an honest man, you'd still carry through with your $20,000 promis…

This is what I'm saying:

Once you agree to buy the company, a drop in the stock price doesn't make you any worse off. Your circumstances are exactly the same. You are worse off relative to a counterfactual scenario in which you agreed to buy the company after the stock drop instead of before. But you are no worse off after the stock drops than you were before it dropped.

And this fact is not at all compatible with shapefrog's argument. Elon Musk didn't experience a loss. There is no bag for him to hold. He will experience a loss if he cancels the deal, but that's an unrelated scenario.

In your scenario, the car buyer can immediately benefit from canceling the contract by buying a car (from some other vendor) and pocketing the $5,000 difference. No such option is available in the case of Twitter.

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

#338

Post by vehementi »

rchaud wrote: post #156
koheripbal wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> That will be almost impossible to prove

I mean, the trivial case is Musk's discovery reveals some smoking gun email about knowing that their methodology showed 50% mDAU were bots but the CEO overruling everyone and putting 5% on the SEC filing instead. Not close to impossible to prove if it's that stupid (not saying it is)

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

#339

Post by Banana699 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #255
Banana699 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

They're challenging you to be specific about the opinions. And you really need to explain how that proves your point about twitter. In general, if someone makes a really dumb response to you, that doesn't prove you right about anything. And if your argument is "twitter has bad comments" then a bad comment on HN doesn't prove that right.

No post body was provided.

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

#340

Post by throwawaycities »

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…

It’s almost as if Musk used a smoke screen to sell $8.5B in Tesla stock before the crash while redirecting attention to Twitter so as to not raise suspicion about selling his own stock…and then instead of going through with the deal he allegedly sold his Tesla stock to complete, he wants to back-out without paying the $1B penalty.

But that can’t be it and what really happened, Musk is buying Twitter for us and restoring our Free Speech…right?

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