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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

#81

Post by kergonath »

jsnell wrote: post #60
Invictus0 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's methodology for checking bot accounts is clear, consistent, and has been detailing in its SEC filings for years. Anyone that cared could have easily double checked them. Recalling from memory, all they did is take a random sampling of accounts and have a human rate the accounts as a bot or not--back when Twitter had an API it would have been even easier to do this.

No. Nobody outside of Twitter can repeat the analysis. First, only Twitter knows which users are active (the population being analyzed are the DAUs). People doing bot analysis from publicly available define activity based on the account tweeting, which will probably skew heavily toward spam bots. Second, the mDAU metric is the DAUs with known bots having been removed. Nobody outside of Twitter knows which active acco…

They must have some internal documentation though, and the process can be looked at during the trial, right?

So it cannot be replicated by third parties, and Musk does not know what he’s talking about (shocker!), but it can be verified a posteriori. And I assume it will be at some point.

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

#82

Post by phailhaus »

convery wrote: post #10
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #7

> "To the contrary, Musk forwent all due diligence—giving Twitter twenty-four hours to accept his take-it-or-leave-it offer before he would present it directly to Twitter's stockholders," Twitter wrote. Bot/spam account analysis is just trying to do PR spin. Musk has no legal standing to use any of that to back out of the merger. > The five-day trial is now scheduled to begin on October 17 So we will see about 2 more…

> Musk has no legal standing to use any of that to back out of the merger. The claim is that Twitters SEC filings had bots at ~5%, and Musk made the investment based on that. From the leaked recordings of staff, everyone knew that the percentage was much higher.

Nope, Twitter has been very clear in their filings:

> 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 by third parties or from similarly titled metrics of our competitors due to differences in methodology.

Musk can't barge in and say "but MY calculations have a HIGHER number!" because Twitter already acknowledged this could be the case. Musk decided to buy anyways.

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000141809120...

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

#83

Post by ncallaway »

pinko wrote: post #49
usgroup wrote: post #32

Would their be any benefit to Musk going through this ordeal meanwhile fully intending to buy Twitter all along?

Yes, he could end up negotiating a lower price. Even a tiny discount might make it all worthwhile.

It will be hard to negotiate a lower price while a lawsuit about specific performance is still open.

Since Twitter has a real (not guaranteed, but not terribly unlikely) of having a court force Musk to buy Twitter at the original price, I don’t think they’d seriously consider selling at a massive discount. I could see a small haircut to the price in a settlement, so maybe that’s the angle.

But… with the threat of specific performance looming, I just don’t see Twitter moving the needle on their price much.

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

#84

Post by eastbound »

zinekeller wrote: post #38
jjeaff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether they inflated their numbers or not, the burden would be on Musk to prove that and it would be completely impossible to do that with a 3rd party tool. You are a monetizable user on Twitter if you just log in and read tweets. Something that no 3rd party tool could possibly track.

> 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 “Really there are 5% bots? Everybody, look!” He looks more like an engineer who can’t stand the fact that ballpark numbers are a decent way to do business in a lot of cases.

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

#85

Post by pwinnski »

hunterb123 wrote: post #28

Quoted post unavailable.

Given the language twitter surrounded that number with, they probably could. They called out that it was uncertain, described how they estimated it in detail, and stated that reality could be higher or lower.

Given all of that, they could have said the number was .01% or 90%, and neither would have been misrepresentation.

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

#86

Post by judge2020 »

pwinnski wrote: post #76
judge2020 wrote: post #58

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…

The claim is that it's actually much higher, say 25%, but they're intentionally misrepresenting it as 5%; Elon only purchased it at the $54.20 share price because of the market valuing Twitter at a certain price ($45) based on those bot numbers. Musk is claiming that, if the bot numbers were correctly reported at the higher percentage, then the market would've valued twitter at a lower price and he would've offered to purchase it for less money.

But yes, this is very unlikely to be proven since it'd also be fraud against every investor that has put money into TWTR within the past few years, opening the company up to a shareholder lawsuit even after it goes private.

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

#87

Post by jjeaff »

lijogdfljk wrote: post #65
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And thirdly, his boast was that he would solve the bot problem and that would make twitter better. More bots means there's more room for him to improve the company - should be a good thing.

Disclaimer: Just speculating with your scenario. I know nothing on this subject and my understanding of this deal is that of mild curiosity at best. Fair point. Though i would think bots still affect price, right? Ie lets say it's 100% fake right now, what would the value be? Lets say $0 for easy math. Buying it at $54.20 means he has to at least clean up the bots enough to make it worth, at least, $54 to regain his…

Actual bot count is irrelevant. The only thing that matters for revenue purposes would be the results that advertisers are getting by advertising on the platform and what advertisers think of the bot count.

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

#88

Post by jsnell »

kergonath wrote: post #81
jsnell wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Nobody outside of Twitter can repeat the analysis. First, only Twitter knows which users are active (the population being analyzed are the DAUs). People doing bot analysis from publicly available define activity based on the account tweeting, which will probably skew heavily toward spam bots. Second, the mDAU metric is the DAUs with known bots having been removed. Nobody outside of Twitter knows which active acco…

They must have some internal documentation though, and the process can be looked at during the trial, right? So it cannot be replicated by third parties, and Musk does not know what he’s talking about (shocker!), but it can be verified a posteriori . And I assume it will be at some point.

I don't think it would be verified by somebody being given access to Twitter's internal data and redoing their process. At most both sides will trot out some expert witnesses to talk about whether the process / rating guide described in the internal docs are reasonable (what Twitter does doesn't need to be perfect, just not outright fraudulent). I look forward to finding what kind of a kook Musk finds as his expert.

Maybe Musk hopes to find something in discovery to discredit the process, e.g. evidence of the process not being followed, or of the numbers being tampered with.

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

#89

Post by kergonath »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #13
nathanvanfleet wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean he only recently got overconfident? Just a reminder that he already got fined $40 million for his "going private at 420" joke.

Just to put this in perspective: if your net worth is $100,000, this is the equivalent of being fined $14. (Based on Elon's net worth of $278 billion, according to Google)

Still not a great example of a supposedly superior intellect.

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

#90

Post by notahacker »

jqgatsby wrote: post #5

plot twist: the spam analysis tool is correct, and Elon is actually a robot, ala Stephen Byerley in Asimov's "Evidence".

I quite like the plot twist where Elon isn't actually a robot, but he becomes fully convinced he is. He's already expressed sympathies with arguments we're all living in a simulation, right?
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