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

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

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> allows some opinions while banning others Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes? Con: LOL no...no not those views Me: So....deregulation? Con: Haha no not those views either Me: Which views, exactly? Con: Oh, you know the ones https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...

Quoted post unavailable.

Your other post got nuked but to explain more:

It’s okay for some opinions to be suppressed in most places! Some opinions are almost universally considered to be bad, there are some really easy & gross examples that I think most of us can think of. Some are considered bad in a particular context.

The ones you mentioned are great examples of reasonable policy:

- banning covid misinformation to reduce deaths is good, look up “herman cain awards” to see some of the damage the misinfo has done

- banning harassment in the form of misgendering / deadnaming is good

Every rule that has ever existed for people is enforced with some degree of selectivity, if nobody reports a tweet there won’t be action. Posters and moderators are human, reported tweets are probably mostly different from one another and every human doing reviews is different.

It’s okay if your opinion is that a website or all websites should have no moderation based on opinions or anything at all. But Twitter disagrees and I’d guess most people do too!

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

#412
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has been on Twitter for years almost every day, both parties acted in bad faith. Twitter bots are out of control and hard to detect because of newer SMM/bot tech scheduled tweets, and bot runners have had ages to perfect their craft on Twitter, because they were allowed to run free for so long. It's been TOTAL HELL for undiscovered user accounts to break ground on Twitter for almost a decade now at lea…

What circles are you in? I basically never, ever see bots on Twitter, let alone enough to suggest that Twitter is "nowhere near as vibrant as it once was".

Same. And in any event Twitter has never claimed the platform isn’t rife with bots, all their reporting about it has been around what % of mDAU they represent. Where m is “monetizeable”. They didn’t want to sell, Musk forced them into this negotiation on the basis of the whole bots thing. It’s staggering to me anybody is giving him even an ounce of benefit of the doubt here. From the very beginning he’s acted in bad faith and like he knows he’s unable to be held accountable for anything should he not want to be held accountable.

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

#413

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.

People knew Elon was crazy for a long time and it hasn't hurt their demand. If a few people don't want to work for them it's not gonna hurt them much as they are the #1 or #2 company that engineers want to work for.

> they are the #1 or #2 company that engineers want to work for

for real?

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

#414

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> Musk's popularity is largely BECAUSE of his Twitter antics I don't really buy this. I knew loads of Musk fanboys who were crazy about him before Teslas even become available. The 50+ folks that I'm friends with have mostly never used Twitter or read a Musk tweet, but they think Teslas are cool and are reminded that StarLink brought rural Ontario better internet than our own government tried to do for decades. Obvio…

The fanboyism is quite considerably amplified by his public statements. Without them, we may not get much press at all from him, he may be a bit of an unknown quantity. His Social Media / PR is a gigantic part of his value. It distorts reality to a much, much larger audience. Do you remember 'Maroon 5' the band? They had 'Really Big Hits' back in the day . Banger / Chart toppers. But it wasn't until the lead singer w…

Off topic, but the reason Levine joined The Voice is because Maroon 5 had famous hits for 10 years.

And the band was more popular before The Voice. Levine is more famous since.

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

#415
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has been on Twitter for years almost every day, both parties acted in bad faith. Twitter bots are out of control and hard to detect because of newer SMM/bot tech scheduled tweets, and bot runners have had ages to perfect their craft on Twitter, because they were allowed to run free for so long. It's been TOTAL HELL for undiscovered user accounts to break ground on Twitter for almost a decade now at lea…

What circles are you in? I basically never, ever see bots on Twitter, let alone enough to suggest that Twitter is "nowhere near as vibrant as it once was".

Yeah I’m a daily twitter user and the only bots I see at all are the cryptocurrency scam ones replying to Elon tweets.

Other than that, I find twitter works as it always has, and I’m continually finding interesting new people to follow. If anything, I think twitter is the best it’s ever been at least for my hobbies (maker/hacker/diy type stuff).

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

#416
post #123

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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.

A hundred years ago, you just traveled from city-to-city with your posse of 20-guys. Those 20 guys would pretend to be an interested crowd (which draws in / astroturfs fake interest) Real people then start to join the crowd. You then show off your snake oil product working ("guest#1 from the crowd", who is of course your buddy), and then the real people will get excited, and buy your snake oil. Today, you just buy a…

On TV it's the Laugh Track

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

#417
post #14

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> 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.

It's insane because Twitter has been very careful to explain that the 5% number is not some sort of "promise". > Additionally, our calculation of mDAU is not based on any standardized industry methodology and is not necessarily calculated in the same manner or comparable to similarly titled measures presented by other companies. Similarly, our measures of mDAU growth and engagement may differ from estimates published…

> They covered themselves very clearly,

I am shocked, just shocked that a company with six billion dollars of cash on hand is able to afford good enough lawyers who make their SEC reports ironclad against shareholder lawsuits. Who would've thought.

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

#418
post #140

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[flagged]

Even if we grant the accusations of enforcing a leftist orthodoxy, that's twitter's prerogative, you may not like left wing people but they are allowed to have a website that caters to a left wing audience.

What personal consequences do you think should come to the members of the administration that sent lists of accounts to Twitter and other social media companies requesting bans?

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

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. He signed the merger agreement without doing DD into mDAU, and didn’t write any contingencies around mDAU onto the contract. You do your diligence BEFORE signing the merger agreement.

O, that seems pretty odd. I can't think of any reason for them to do that beyond trying to get out of the deal or incredible negligence on the musk side in not doing that before hand. Were they able to get that data before hand if they wanted it?

It doesn’t really matter at this point, because he signed a binding agreement. He’s the one that made that move. Specifically why is just speculation now.

But, hey, we’re all here speculating anyway! My take is:

1) He’s a history of making impulsive decisions without thinking (or caring) about the consequences.

2) It forced Twitter’s hand because they couldn’t act like it was it a non-genuine offer.

3) He’s so rarely held accountable for the consequences of his decisions he knew it didn’t matter because he’s above the law.

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

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the next time Musk tries to buy something that costs $44 billion dollars he should do a little more homework. Waiving due diligence, though perfectly in line with his trollish vibe, is something he's going to regret for years. The bottom line is the guy gets off on being an irreverent, flamboyant dipshit and this time it's biting him in the ass. And I for one am here for it. After the last few years I have…

Even if he's forced to buy Twitter, let's not forget that... he will own Twitter. I'm not sure that's a net positive for the world. Though I'm not certain it's a net negative either. And though it may well be expensive, it's not as if the $44 billion disappears: in fact it buys Twitter. And though he might regret it all in the end, he'll still have enormous wealth. (And Twitter.) So... it does feel a bit like a pyrrh…

He doesn't have the money any more...
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