6 ms·

Apparently Twitter claims only 5% of users are bots. It seems impossible to me that this claim is remotely true, and I imagine Musk knows this. This kind of sou

Apparently Twitter claims only 5% of users are bots. It seems impossible to me that this claim is remotely true, and I imagine Musk knows this. This kind of sounds to me like he's decided he doesn't want to buy and is creating a reason not to.

dazc 4y ago
>This kind of sounds to me like he's decided he doesn't want to buy and is creating a reason not to. You can offer to buy a house knowing full well there are going to be problems which will show up in the surveyor's report. You can then adjust your offer accordingly. This offer will likely reflect what you were willing to pay all along. A low initial offer would be rejected since, at that point, the problems were not public knowledge. Now they are public knowledge, accepting a revised low offer may be the only option left? I've mentioned this story elsewhere but it's still relevant... Year's ago I had a few twitter accounts that I was holding purely for the handle/name. I never followed anyone or tweeted anything, they were dormant accounts and I rarely logged in. After a couple of years these accounts were following random celebrities, rock bands and public figures. It seemed obvious at the time that twitter were using dormant accounts to bolster follower numbers and I expect this has been happening on a huge scale for years. So, bots aside, twitter's numbers are the stuff of dreams and fairy tales.
- CJefferson 4y ago
  However, legally Elon is past that point. He decided he didn't want to do a surveryor's report, and "signed on the dotted line", and gave his price. As far as I understand, he's on the hook now, unless he can show serious Twitter's numbers are wrong enough to cause a "Material Adverse Effect" on the company, which is super difficult and this bot thing probably isn't enough.
  - mhoad 4y ago
    Especially when you have him repeatedly on the record talking about the bot problem prior to the sale. There’s zero compelling evidence at this stage that he was in anyway unaware of it or it’s scale.
  - throwntoday 4y ago
    I keep seeing people say this, but where did you all read that he agreed to the deal without any due dillegence? I read someone calling Musk the idiot and confidently stating twitter would run their bot checks against the entire userbase because they're competent. Then Musk tweeted their internal check is literally from a sample size of 100. Next twitter called him to say he violated NDA by publicly disclosing that fact. Twitter does not come off as an honest company. They don't use a standard measurement for DAU, they admitted to inflating the numbers on top of that, and now we know their bot check for what, 100MM+ accounts was from n=100?? I honestly hope he tanks their stock price when he backs out and buys them for $10b or something.
    - shrikant 4y ago
      > I keep seeing people say this, but where did you all read that he agreed to the deal without any due dillegence? Literally every single news outlet -- just search online for "musk twitter due diligence" Some selected sources: - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-26/twitter-takeover-was-brash-and-fast-with-musk-calling-the-shots https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-26/twitter-t... - https://www.ft.com/content/f60b6385-eef6-461e-9fcc-b3cb999a70c6 https://www.ft.com/content/f60b6385-eef6-461e-9fcc-b3cb999a7... - https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-says-44-billion-twitter-deal-hold-2022-05-13/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-says-44-billion-twit... - https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musks-pause-on-twitter-takeover-triggers-a-flap-12612206 https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musks-pause-on-twitter-takeo...
      - throwntoday 4y ago
        The bloomberg article provides no source for the claim. It even says neither twitter nor Musk's camp commented. Your second link is paywalled. And the last two only mention it as though it is fact but also provide zero sources. I don't care if every news outlet is saying it, where is the source of this? Sadaam also had WMD's according to every news outlet. I know Musk moves quick and frantically sometimes, but it's hard to believe he waived DD. And if he did, why would he be doing any DD now?
        4y ago
- cafard 4y ago
  Two words: inspection contingency. You can offer a contract to buy a house with or without one.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > You can offer to buy a house knowing full well there are going to be problems which will show up in the surveyor's report. You can then adjust your offer accordingly. I think you mean home inspector, not surveyor? Problems: 1) The home inspection contingency has to be in the offer. 2) The buyer has to hire a professional, independent home inspector. You can't just send in anyone and make up stuff. 3) The seller has the opportunity to remedy any problems that arise in the inspection report. So in this case, by analogy, Twitter could do a mass purge of accounts under looser criteria than usual, taking out a bunch of spammers and likely a bunch of innocent accounts at the same time. Then the deal would still have to go through at the original price. In home buying, I've never heard of anyone taking this strategy you're suggesting. It would be reckless and probably not work as you hoped. Once an offer is accepted by the seller, it's very hard to get out. If you suspect there are significant problems with the house that need repair, and the seller knows there are significant problems, it would be extremely extremely dumb to make a higher offer than you'd pay, hoping the home inspection will save you.
  - MrMan 4y ago
    why are you two taking about home buying? Mergers and Acquisitions cant be done by analogy.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      This is rather bizarre reply to me, because I myself was replying to someone who made the analogy with home buying, and I was trying to explain how the analogy didn't even work. To make an analogy, it's like if I asked you why you're talking about home buying. ;-)
      - dazc 4y ago
        I think he was replying to both of us. And yes, maybe, the analogy wasn't great.
  - dazc 4y ago
    I am in the UK, where my analogy would be valid, you do get a surveyor's report and you can back out. I accept your system is different and, likely, a whole lot better.
arinlen 4y ago
> This kind of sounds to me like he's decided he doesn't want to buy and is creating a reason not to. Bloomberg's article points out that this sort of desperate copout is not possible under the merger deal that Elon Musk signed, and even if Twitter decided not to push for a legal dispute they are automatically entitled to a $1B payment from Elon Musk.
bambax 4y ago
He renounced the opportunity to do any serious due diligence, and signed a contract forcing him to buy no matter what. It's a little late for this now. If he's seriously worried about bots _now_, he's stupid (or high?) The other explanation is that there is a bigger scheme, maybe involving a reason to sell some Tesla stock. That's possible, but it seems a little too complex to be actually true.
knotofvipers 4y ago
I would think this number can be highly massaged anyway. I hate twitter but have an account I barely ever log into and have never tweeted anything. If you want bots to be lower then count me in the sample. If you want bots to be higher don't count me since I am not really active. If you want bots to be lower then take the sample at 4am EST on a Tuesday of US users. If you want bots to be higher take the sample right after a major news story breaks. Instead of 5% you could say 10 million active bots a month to make the number sound higher too.
dagw 4y ago
Apparently Twitter claims only 5% of users are bots. I can't find the exact wording right now, but I recall when I read their original statement from Twitter the number came with several caveats and conditions. Basically they didn't say that only 5% of accounts where bots, but that of accounts that fulfil criteria A, B, C and D, only 5% are bots. edit: the full information is on page 5 of their Q-10 here [1]. [1] https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/sec-filings/sec-filings-details/default.aspx?FilingId=15778368 https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/sec-fi...
- karencarits 4y ago
  Relevant parts (mDAU = monetizable daily active usage or users): > We define mDAU as people, organizations, or other accounts who logged in or were otherwise authenticated and accessed Twitter on any given day through twitter.com, Twitter applications that are able to show ads, or paid Twitter products, including subscriptions. Average mDAU for a period represents the number of mDAU on each day of such period divided by the number of days for such period > We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter
ZuLuuuuuu 4y ago
It is not "5% of all users". The filing by Twitter says "5% of monetizable, daily, active users (mDAU)". Not only that, the filing also says that Twitter used heavy judgment to end up with this number, so the real number might be higher. The filing by Twitter: https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/sec-filings/sec-filings-details/default.aspx?FilingId=15778368 https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/sec-fi... The relevant paragraph: "We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter. The false or spam accounts for a period represents the average of false or spam accounts in the samples during each monthly analysis period during the quarter. In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated." Basically, I feel like there is no legal substance to Elon Musk's "excuse".
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
95% maybe

dazc 4y ago

>This kind of sounds to me like he's decided he doesn't want to buy and is creating a reason not to. You can offer to buy a house knowing full well there are going to be problems which will show up in the surveyor's report. You can then adjust your offer accordingly. This offer will likely reflect what you were willing to pay all along. A low initial offer would be rejected since, at that point, the problems were not public knowledge. Now they are public knowledge, accepting a revised low offer may be the only option left? I've mentioned this story elsewhere but it's still relevant... Year's ago I had a few twitter accounts that I was holding purely for the handle/name. I never followed anyone or tweeted anything, they were dormant accounts and I rarely logged in. After a couple of years these accounts were following random celebrities, rock bands and public figures. It seemed obvious at the time that twitter were using dormant accounts to bolster follower numbers and I expect this has been happening on a huge scale for years. So, bots aside, twitter's numbers are the stuff of dreams and fairy tales.

CJefferson 4y ago
However, legally Elon is past that point. He decided he didn't want to do a surveryor's report, and "signed on the dotted line", and gave his price. As far as I understand, he's on the hook now, unless he can show serious Twitter's numbers are wrong enough to cause a "Material Adverse Effect" on the company, which is super difficult and this bot thing probably isn't enough.
- mhoad 4y ago
  Especially when you have him repeatedly on the record talking about the bot problem prior to the sale. There’s zero compelling evidence at this stage that he was in anyway unaware of it or it’s scale.
- throwntoday 4y ago
  I keep seeing people say this, but where did you all read that he agreed to the deal without any due dillegence? I read someone calling Musk the idiot and confidently stating twitter would run their bot checks against the entire userbase because they're competent. Then Musk tweeted their internal check is literally from a sample size of 100. Next twitter called him to say he violated NDA by publicly disclosing that fact. Twitter does not come off as an honest company. They don't use a standard measurement for DAU, they admitted to inflating the numbers on top of that, and now we know their bot check for what, 100MM+ accounts was from n=100?? I honestly hope he tanks their stock price when he backs out and buys them for $10b or something.
  - shrikant 4y ago
    > I keep seeing people say this, but where did you all read that he agreed to the deal without any due dillegence? Literally every single news outlet -- just search online for "musk twitter due diligence" Some selected sources: - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-26/twitter-takeover-was-brash-and-fast-with-musk-calling-the-shots https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-26/twitter-t... - https://www.ft.com/content/f60b6385-eef6-461e-9fcc-b3cb999a70c6 https://www.ft.com/content/f60b6385-eef6-461e-9fcc-b3cb999a7... - https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-says-44-billion-twitter-deal-hold-2022-05-13/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-says-44-billion-twit... - https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musks-pause-on-twitter-takeover-triggers-a-flap-12612206 https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musks-pause-on-twitter-takeo...
    - throwntoday 4y ago
      The bloomberg article provides no source for the claim. It even says neither twitter nor Musk's camp commented. Your second link is paywalled. And the last two only mention it as though it is fact but also provide zero sources. I don't care if every news outlet is saying it, where is the source of this? Sadaam also had WMD's according to every news outlet. I know Musk moves quick and frantically sometimes, but it's hard to believe he waived DD. And if he did, why would he be doing any DD now?
      - 4y ago
cafard 4y ago
Two words: inspection contingency. You can offer a contract to buy a house with or without one.
lapcat 4y ago
> You can offer to buy a house knowing full well there are going to be problems which will show up in the surveyor's report. You can then adjust your offer accordingly. I think you mean home inspector, not surveyor? Problems: 1) The home inspection contingency has to be in the offer. 2) The buyer has to hire a professional, independent home inspector. You can't just send in anyone and make up stuff. 3) The seller has the opportunity to remedy any problems that arise in the inspection report. So in this case, by analogy, Twitter could do a mass purge of accounts under looser criteria than usual, taking out a bunch of spammers and likely a bunch of innocent accounts at the same time. Then the deal would still have to go through at the original price. In home buying, I've never heard of anyone taking this strategy you're suggesting. It would be reckless and probably not work as you hoped. Once an offer is accepted by the seller, it's very hard to get out. If you suspect there are significant problems with the house that need repair, and the seller knows there are significant problems, it would be extremely extremely dumb to make a higher offer than you'd pay, hoping the home inspection will save you.
- MrMan 4y ago
  why are you two taking about home buying? Mergers and Acquisitions cant be done by analogy.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    This is rather bizarre reply to me, because I myself was replying to someone who made the analogy with home buying, and I was trying to explain how the analogy didn't even work. To make an analogy, it's like if I asked you why you're talking about home buying. ;-)
    - dazc 4y ago
      I think he was replying to both of us. And yes, maybe, the analogy wasn't great.
- dazc 4y ago
  I am in the UK, where my analogy would be valid, you do get a surveyor's report and you can back out. I accept your system is different and, likely, a whole lot better.

arinlen 4y ago

> This kind of sounds to me like he's decided he doesn't want to buy and is creating a reason not to. Bloomberg's article points out that this sort of desperate copout is not possible under the merger deal that Elon Musk signed, and even if Twitter decided not to push for a legal dispute they are automatically entitled to a $1B payment from Elon Musk.

bambax 4y ago

He renounced the opportunity to do any serious due diligence, and signed a contract forcing him to buy no matter what. It's a little late for this now. If he's seriously worried about bots _now_, he's stupid (or high?) The other explanation is that there is a bigger scheme, maybe involving a reason to sell some Tesla stock. That's possible, but it seems a little too complex to be actually true.

knotofvipers 4y ago

I would think this number can be highly massaged anyway. I hate twitter but have an account I barely ever log into and have never tweeted anything. If you want bots to be lower then count me in the sample. If you want bots to be higher don't count me since I am not really active. If you want bots to be lower then take the sample at 4am EST on a Tuesday of US users. If you want bots to be higher take the sample right after a major news story breaks. Instead of 5% you could say 10 million active bots a month to make the number sound higher too.

dagw 4y ago

Apparently Twitter claims only 5% of users are bots. I can't find the exact wording right now, but I recall when I read their original statement from Twitter the number came with several caveats and conditions. Basically they didn't say that only 5% of accounts where bots, but that of accounts that fulfil criteria A, B, C and D, only 5% are bots. edit: the full information is on page 5 of their Q-10 here [1]. [1] https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/sec-filings/sec-filings-details/default.aspx?FilingId=15778368 https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/sec-fi...

karencarits 4y ago
Relevant parts (mDAU = monetizable daily active usage or users): > We define mDAU as people, organizations, or other accounts who logged in or were otherwise authenticated and accessed Twitter on any given day through twitter.com, Twitter applications that are able to show ads, or paid Twitter products, including subscriptions. Average mDAU for a period represents the number of mDAU on each day of such period divided by the number of days for such period > We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter

ZuLuuuuuu 4y ago

It is not "5% of all users". The filing by Twitter says "5% of monetizable, daily, active users (mDAU)". Not only that, the filing also says that Twitter used heavy judgment to end up with this number, so the real number might be higher. The filing by Twitter: https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/sec-filings/sec-filings-details/default.aspx?FilingId=15778368 https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/sec-fi... The relevant paragraph: "We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter. The false or spam accounts for a period represents the average of false or spam accounts in the samples during each monthly analysis period during the quarter. In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated." Basically, I feel like there is no legal substance to Elon Musk's "excuse".

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

95% maybe