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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

#351

Post by bko »

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…

> Who could possibly be on the side of the buyer?

I don't know. It just strikes me as weird as forcing someone to buy something that they don't want to own or run. Especially after fighting it for months and even adopting a poison pill.

Imagine if you agreed to buy a house for $1 million and the housing market crashes and the house is worth $500k. And now multiply those values by 50,000. Why wouldn't you try to get out of the deal?

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

#352

Post by kentm »

siliconc0w wrote: post #282
kentm wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Was it? TBH I'm a little confused by the downvotes - going by the 100 sample size number @ a 95% confidence level this is a 10 point margin of error. This seems like basic statistics but maybe I'm missing something. I think it's fair to assume that they had people who were taught basic statistics doing these calculations. If these people then say they think the number of bots is 5% without mentioning the margin of er…

> This seems like basic statistics but maybe I'm missing something.

Yep, the thing you're missing is that it was 100 samples per week, over a quarter, so 900 samples per calculation. I don't remember the margin of error cited but I think it was about .5%. Its not your fault though, because this is a misunderstanding that Musk actively encouraged in his tweets.

Musk has actually shown quite a few times that he either doesn't know what he's talking about here or is trying to mislead the public. For example, he also confuses total bot count and the number of bots in mDAU, which are different things.

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

#353

Post by yalogin »

Musk has done irreparable damage to his name and brand. The decline from genius and eccentric to straight up fraudster and borderline unstable is just amazing actually. I now don’t know what to think of him as he still has amazing businesses and they haven’t even peaked yet. I may still buy stock in them but won’t work for him ever.

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

#355

Post by sudosysgen »

SilverBirch wrote: post #307
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #285

I really can't see any other outcome besides Musk getting his ass handed to him by the Delaware Court of Chancery. It's always important to look at incentives and motivations when trying to read the tea leaves, and if you look at Delaware's incentives, it's very clear. The whole reason everyone incorporates in Delaware is because they have centuries of handling business cases and have built out a clear set of rules a…

Actually I have to take you up on this, people who run large corporations say that it's the strong legal regime they have. In reality, it's a tax shelter. The only question is "How much does Delaware care about their status as a real legal regime vs their actual purpose: a tax haven". They know it's difficult to defend "We're a tax shelter sucking revenue out of the rest of the union", so they argue "We have strong l…

I think it's both. Many states could compete with Delaware by also becoming tax havens. They can't anymore, because there is now more to it that simply being cheap.

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

#356

Post by logicalmonster »

evan_ wrote: post #213
logicalmonster wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Botometer's test claims to use over 1000 individual features in its analysis and it is unknown (to me, please clarify if you know) if they use Twitter's exact definition of monetizable daily active users in their system.

What botometer does or does not do is completely irrelevant to twitter’s mDAU calculation. No matter how many thousands of individual features botometer has, it cannot (and will never be able to) tell whether Twitter has served ads to that user today.

> What botometer does or does not do is completely irrelevant to twitter’s mDAU calculation.

Agreed, but this article was about the tool Musk used and that's what my comment was directed towards.

> No matter how many thousands of individual features botometer has, it cannot (and will never be able to) tell whether Twitter has served ads to that user today.

That seems likely, but I don't think that really means much given that Twitter's interest lays in serving as many ads as they can get away with.

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

#357

Post by homonculus1 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #317
762236 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it fake? I'd have never learned about, e.g., some of the gender critical viewpoints, if Twitter hadn't banned people expressing them. It wouldn't have come on my radar. But since Twitter did ban some of those people, those viewpoints came on my radar (being relayed by others via screenshots), which raised my awareness of it. That fits the definition of Streisand effect.

Because twitter wasn't trying to make those viewpoints go away or hide them from the world. They just didn't want to themselves amplify those views to hundreds or thousands or more people. Twitter's not trying to keep gender critical viewpoints a secret, or remove them from anywhere outside of twitter.

That is a ridiculously tortured argument. The censor not extending his reach to outside venues doesn't make him any less a censor.

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

#358

Post by Banana699 »

dragontamer wrote: post #322
Banana699 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does any of this change or contradict what I said? And doesn't the US legal system allow for escalation to the Supreme Court, which can override lower courts? So technically whatever the Delware Court is not the final say on whatever happens. >Trial date set to October This is so so awesome, I will get to see Twatter defenders rage and fume for 2 more months? ^__^

> and law can frequently have surprising implications in the twists and turns of the its logical structure, which - as a bonus - differ by time and exact place. There's no twist or turn of the law I can possibly imagine between today, and October, in the Delaware Court of Chicanery. There is a reason why contract laws are written to be argued in this court. Its considered one of the most straightforward courts in the…

>There's no twist or turn of the law I can possibly imagine

If you're not a lawyer, this has 0 value. If you're not a highly paid team of several top lawyers, this has less than 0 value. Their entire profession is to spin circles around common sense or naive reasoning, so just wait and see. Law is harder than you think. Don't Dunning-Kruger your way into a highly complex domain, it never works.

>What kind of "surprise legal twist" do you think will happen over the next 2 months

By my own admission, I'm not a lawyer. So I don't understand why you think you or me can answer or predict this question better than those studying for decades and highly paid for months to think about it.

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

#360

Post by bobobob420 »

pavlov wrote: post #274
santiagobasulto wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except this is not a house. It’s a public company. And a lot of people own a piece of that company. And a lot of them were unhappy about how Twitter’s leadership was running things. I honestly don’t care, I’m not on either side. But this was not a house sale, and Musk wasn’t a crazy dude approaching a home owner. He had a lot of support from shareholders since day 1.

Yes. And he promised those shareholders $54.20 per share, signed the contract, and now the same shareholders are suing to get the money. They don’t care what happens to Twitter if Musk takes over since they’ll have cash instead of shares at that point and can reinvest in something more promising.

Why would he buy the company after the stock crashed? He could buy the company for way cheaper publicly. Who cares what the contract says, theres different rules for billionaires than there are for the contracts I sign. No sane person would go through with it after the stock crashed, its not a financially smart move. A lot of geniuses in this thread but lack basic social and common aptitude as usual. Life is not a fantasy, its corrupt and rich people can do what they want.
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