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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

#521

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?

Yes, Musk could have received that data and had time to analyze it before buying, these kind of merger contract processes have time built into them to allow prospective buyers to look into finances and other information that is not normally publicly available. Musk was so certain he wanted this that he signed additional documents waiving his right to a due diligence period, allowing him to immediately sign the merger agreement.

This next bit is mainly speculation, but the reason Musk is actually trying to back out is partly to do with the fact that signing the merger contract caused his other companies stock prices to drop and public speculation that his existing business would suffer if he needed to focus on running Twitter. The second and more widely believed version of events is that partly due in fact to his other stock prices dropping, Musk cannot afford Twitter without having to sell more of Tesla and SpaceX than he is willing to. Musk is already down to owning only 17% of Tesla and less than 50% of SpaceX, although that's complicated as some percentage of Tesla is owned by SpaceX and vice versa along with the Boring company in such a way that Musk effectively has majority control over SpaceX whenever he wants. If he has to sell additional stock to cover the purchase of Twitter he would very likely lose the ability to control everything except possibly the Boring Company.

What's more, the contract he signed effectively puts him in a position of buying Twitter at a substantial loss as the stock market has significantly fallen since Musk signed the deal. He would effectively be losing significant control of his two primary sources of wealth in exchange for something he has likely since discovered he cannot run the way he wants.

In short, this was a bad move financially when Musk first announced his intentions, it was extremely foolish of him to waive due diligence, and it became financially even worse shortly after he signed the deal, partly due to the facts that people lost trust in him for waiving due diligence while making a financially inadvisable move, partly due to the fact that he's actually pretty bad at math and doesn't understand the stock market, and partly because the stock market took a nose dive right after he foolishly waived due diligence and signed such a financially ruinous deal.

If you're thinking Musk is smarter than I'm making him out to be, please consider that Musk tried to insert himself into a cave rescue he had nothing to do with, was told not to interfere with the professionals that know what they're doing, and retaliated to being told to butt out by publicly accusing the rescue team lead of being a pedophile despite knowing nothing about the man.

Trying to offer to help without really understanding the situation isn't necessarily a bad thing, but randomly accusing someone of being a pedophile because they were critical of you is so far beyond acceptable behavior it's amazing Musk wasn't banned from Twitter as a result (it was where he made the accusation publicly). That level of harassment violates Twitter's ToS, plain and simple.

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

#522
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly reverse psychology, confirming that this was indeed their play all along!

You joke, but expect to see this very idea put forward in all seriousness as this whole thing plays out. Likely by Musk fans, etc., but still.

I'm very much looking forward to my "I called it!" moment :-)

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

#523
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You have to make a series of countless good or great decisions to be that successful. His ratio of good decisions to bad ones is probably one of the best in the world. He is not above the law, he has to stand before court as every normal citizen has.

If you think his ratio of good to bad business decisions is even average then you haven't been paying attention. Tesla has nearly gone bankrupt repeatedly, and it's stock price has largely risen the most after Musk was removed from controlling the company as a result of a series of tweets that were considered illegal attempts at manipulating the stock market. In point of fact, Musk still controls SpaceX and internal memos leaked earlier this year indicate that SpaceX could very well go Bankrupt within the next 18 months. The Boring Company is generally solvent and under Musk's full control, but it is far smaller, and could be in danger of law suits for effectively failing to meet contractual obligations regarding the tunnel the agreed to provide Las Vegas. The Boring Company's future doesn't look great to me, their results don't meet public expectations which could easily lead to funding drying up.

Also, anybody who thinks accusing a rescue diver of pedophilia purely because he told them not to interfere with rescue efforts is pretty far from being a genius. Musk has been lucky his whole life, people just rarely see his failures.

Basically, his press is full of shit. The claim that he learned to program and wrote a video game at age 10 is quite ridiculous. Seriously, there are online websites where you can play his "game". It's Space Invaders, except theirs only one alien, you can't have multiple projectiles on the screen at the same time, the alien doesn't fire at you unless they get extremely close, if the alien fires at you it locks your controls making it virtually impossible to dodge and prevents you from firing back, and when you successfully hit the alien it immediately respawns at a random location which may be in range of you, resulting in you immediately dying. My own nephew programmed significantly more impressive games at age 10, will people start following him and assume he's never made any mistakes if someone who owns an emerald mine gives him hundreds of millions of dollars to invest into new technologies and the businesses don't ultimately fail?

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

#524
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to make a series of countless good or great decisions to be that successful. His ratio of good decisions to bad ones is probably one of the best in the world. He is not above the law, he has to stand before court as every normal citizen has.

If you think his ratio of good to bad business decisions is even average then you haven't been paying attention. Tesla has nearly gone bankrupt repeatedly, and it's stock price has largely risen the most after Musk was removed from controlling the company as a result of a series of tweets that were considered illegal attempts at manipulating the stock market. In point of fact, Musk still controls SpaceX and internal…

I’m not an Elon Musk fan but it was 1981 when he was 10. There were far fewer resources for learning to program and make games in 1981 than there are today. Not to take away from what your nephew did, but there are currently hundreds of “how to make a game” tutorials available online in a variety of instantly consumable formats. There are even entire development environments focused on simplifying game development with low code workflows. In 1981 there wasn't even the concept of a widely accessible public Internet.

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

#525
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to make a series of countless good or great decisions to be that successful. His ratio of good decisions to bad ones is probably one of the best in the world. He is not above the law, he has to stand before court as every normal citizen has.

If you think his ratio of good to bad business decisions is even average then you haven't been paying attention. Tesla has nearly gone bankrupt repeatedly, and it's stock price has largely risen the most after Musk was removed from controlling the company as a result of a series of tweets that were considered illegal attempts at manipulating the stock market. In point of fact, Musk still controls SpaceX and internal…

Is your nephew close to Musk's age? Programming a simple game in 1980 is much more impressive to me than doing the same in the 2010s.

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

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, it wouldn't matter anyway. He signed away any and all rights to due diligence in the agreement. He waived DD but the claim is that Twitter specifically inflated numbers to make itself appealing for an acquisition/merger, which would still be grounds for breaking the contract without Musk needing to give any money to Twitter or complete the purchase.

IANAL, but I've read Twitter's SEC filings, and I don't see any potential inflation. The section on bots is extremely clear and specifically states that reality may be higher or lower than their rough estimate, after explaining exactly how they make the rough estimate. So... "We think it's 5% using these methods, but if those methods are wrong, then the actual number could be higher or lower." How does that lead to g…

Just because you have a disclaimer doesn't mean you are free to state a wildly wrong number.

I'm not saying that the numbe is wildly wrong. I'm saying the disclaimer doesn't relieve you from the responsibilities.

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

#528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely moot. If Musk could demonstrate that the 5% number was actually a fraud (that is, not just wrong, but people were lying about it) and show that the true number is so different that it would cause a material adverse effect, then he’d have an argument to escape the contract even with the DD waiver. I don’t think he has a shot in hell at demonstrating fraud, given the various disclaimers around the quoted f…

That’s kind of like saying he has a shot at getting out of the agreement if the sun collapses.

Meanwhile other people argue that, even if twitter reports a wildly wrong number, twitter still isn't at fault.

It seems like people like to exaggerate both ways.

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

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens in cases like this is that Musk will request the court for discovery of internal Twitter documents/emails/reports/etc to backup his claim that Twitter was aware that more bots existed in their BAU number than they reported. Twitter will object, but ultimately some degree of discovery will be allowed (with a more narrow scope), but it will pressure Twitter to settle for a lower purchase price because god…

Internal emails is always a big big random variable which can then spawn all sorts of unrelated lawsuits from discrimination, to regulatory fines, to executives' private life drama, etc... Given the NDAs that would apply to such discovery, were such information to exist and to become public, Musk would likely be imprisoned for contempt of court. Not simply fined. Imprisoned. And his lawyers would likely be suspended…

Have you met https://twitter.com/TechEmails ?

Musk doesn't need to leak emails.

The discovery by the lawyer team alone is probably scary enough.

There is a high chance that twitter will settle for XB.

At this point, it is just free money for twitter.

Imagine Musk acquires twitter and exposes all internal emails (well, he owns the company) and sue execs one by one for every little thing that is wrong.

Execs are earning 10M/year. For these people, money is not an issue. Getting into a scandal is a huge issue.

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

#530
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine it playing out in a romance! "You cad. I never wanted to marry you, but I felt compelled to accept your proposal. But now that you are trying to back out, I am trying to force you to marry me, you idiot." Although in this case, contrary to what it's arguing, Twitter doesn't actually want the marriage to happen. It just wants to keep the $1B engagement ring.

You're not caught up with things. Twitter is suing to force the deal to go through at the original price, not to get the $1B.

I'm aware of the latest developments, but let's work through this.

There are basically two categories of Twitter shareholders: Those who are invested in the business's long-term success, and those who could care less about the business and want to dump the stock as soon as they can get a good price for it.

Right now, the latter category want the sale to go through so they can divest; they don't care if Twitter burns to the ground afterward.

But what is the outcome that people invested in Twitter's long-term success actually want? Twitter's lawyers are arguing that Musk is an incompetent businessman who made a really terrible knee-jerk decision, and in the same breath they're saying that he should be compelled to be made Twitter's new owner -- an unwilling, incompetent owner who will likely tank the business even if he doesn't make any more stupid decisions, just by virtue of how this all played out.

These people, one would think, would prefer to get the $1B parting fee and be done with Musk, even if that means passing up on the potential for a short-term gain that an outright sale might give them.

Similarly, in a romance, whatever short-term benefits you might get by having a wedding, they're never going to be worth the trouble if it means marrying a terrible person.

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