5 ms·

Twitter can’t give Musk the data he needs to determine fake accounts. It’s obvious that while Twitter does some work to detect fake accounts, they probably only

Twitter can’t give Musk the data he needs to determine fake accounts. It’s obvious that while Twitter does some work to detect fake accounts, they probably only go after low hanging fruit. Twitter is balancing investment costs vs impact to the platform and obviously they are coming in light. Everyone that uses Twitter knows it has a bot problem. If Musk’s team does a deeper dive than Twitter is willing to invest in and determines that the number of bots is material, it calls into question the entire financial model of Twitter. Customers will demand refunds and earnings will have to be restated going back years. It’s going to be a nuclear financial bomb. So of course Twitter is going to sandbag. They can’t afford to release that data because they know it’s going to be material. Musk knows this and Twitter knows this. I think Twitter is actually fucked now because their number of accounts will come into question and maybe even the SEC might squeeze them. But Twitter will probably look tough but try to close this chapter as quickly as possible and hope that no one digs deeper into the fake accounts.

ceejayoz 4y ago
> Everyone that uses Twitter knows it has a bot problem. Which is precisely the problem with signing a "I'm buying you for $44B" and then claiming you had no idea they had so many bots to back out of it.
- remflight 4y ago
  Your argument doesn’t hold water. You can have a sense of the amount of bots but if it’s wildly off, then of course it’s going to be shocking.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    He opted to buy the company, and very shortly afterwards said the 5% number - which they've consistently submitted to the SEC for years - is obviously wrong. Unless he can convincingly explain how he went from naively believing the 5% number to certain it's massively and fraudulently incorrect - in a matter of weeks and with no new information - to the court, he's pretty fucked here.
    - remflight 4y ago
      You simply don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s not how the real world works.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-09/elon-s-out https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-09/elon-s... > The bots thing, man, I don’t know. We have talked about this before. Back before the market crashed, back when he was pretending to want to buy Twitter, Musk was pretending that he wanted to buy Twitter in order to clean up the bot problem. Now he is pretending to want to get out of the deal because of the bot problem. It is tiresome to pretend to take this seriously, so let’s not. Read the whole thing.
iudqnolq 4y ago
> If Musk’s team does a deeper dive than Twitter is willing to invest in and determines that the number of bots is material, it calls into question the entire financial model of Twitter. Customers will demand refunds and earnings will have to be restated going back years. It’s going to be a nuclear financial bomb. This doesn't make sense. "Material" is a term of art defined with regard to the current deal, there's no such thing as determining "the number of bots is material" in a general sense such that customers (I presume you mean advertisers) would automatically be allowed to sue. Sure, if Musk finds Twitter has historically lied that would be significant. But Twitter doesn't have a single "bot number". In specific circumstances they make specific calculations using defined procedures. For example, the number Musk is whining about uses active - not all - users as the denominator, so of course it's going to be lower than the "real" number of bots. Surprisingly to me, so far Musk hasn't provided an argument beyond this same sort of word salad. Maybe he's playing n-dimensional chess, but if Twitter sues him he'll presumably have to make his real secret arguments in open court. We'll see then.
- remflight 4y ago
  Of course it makes sense. “Material” is a financial term that is used all the time. It’s not a surprising term at all and fits here. Twitter doesn’t have to be caught in a lie. They can just be caught with having a materially different numbers of fake accounts from their stated numbers. If 25% of the amount you paid to Twitter for ads went to bots and fake accounts, you don’t think that you deserve a refund? You don’t think advertisers would take advantage of that to get refunds? You don’t think the SEC would be interested in this? The whole point is Musk’s team is going to dig up stuff that Twitter won’t want to fix because the cost to find and track it will overweigh the amount of money they make probably. But it will have ramifications in terms of things like refunds and customers leaving the platform entirely. It will make them look really bad. It’s inevitable.
  - iudqnolq 4y ago
    > “Material” is a financial term that is used all the time. It’s not a surprising term at all and fits here. Yes, but it's only well-defined with regard to specific circumstances. It makes no sense to say something material to this deal will inherently be material to completely different circumstances like the contracts signed with advertisers or users.
phailhaus 4y ago
> Twitter can’t give Musk the data he needs to determine fake accounts. Twitter has already given Musk access to the "firehose of data". [1] Musk bragged about buying Twitter because of the bots. Nobody is going to believe that he suddenly cares now that there are too many, not after he waived due diligence and set the buying price as a 420 joke. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-twitter-firehose/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-twitter-firehose/
- remflight 4y ago
  Read the letter from the lawyers. They gave Musk’s team limited access via api until a couple of days ago despite asking for it since may. The limited access was rate limited and had other restrictions. It’s obvious that with a rate limit the amount of data is not enough to do what they need to do.
  - CogitoCogito 4y ago
    Okay if the issue was his access being rate-limited, then what's the issue now that it no longer is? So Musk is able to actually find the evidence he needs now right?

ceejayoz 4y ago

> Everyone that uses Twitter knows it has a bot problem. Which is precisely the problem with signing a "I'm buying you for $44B" and then claiming you had no idea they had so many bots to back out of it.

remflight 4y ago
Your argument doesn’t hold water. You can have a sense of the amount of bots but if it’s wildly off, then of course it’s going to be shocking.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  He opted to buy the company, and very shortly afterwards said the 5% number - which they've consistently submitted to the SEC for years - is obviously wrong. Unless he can convincingly explain how he went from naively believing the 5% number to certain it's massively and fraudulently incorrect - in a matter of weeks and with no new information - to the court, he's pretty fucked here.
  - remflight 4y ago
    You simply don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s not how the real world works.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-09/elon-s-out https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-09/elon-s... > The bots thing, man, I don’t know. We have talked about this before. Back before the market crashed, back when he was pretending to want to buy Twitter, Musk was pretending that he wanted to buy Twitter in order to clean up the bot problem. Now he is pretending to want to get out of the deal because of the bot problem. It is tiresome to pretend to take this seriously, so let’s not. Read the whole thing.

iudqnolq 4y ago

> If Musk’s team does a deeper dive than Twitter is willing to invest in and determines that the number of bots is material, it calls into question the entire financial model of Twitter. Customers will demand refunds and earnings will have to be restated going back years. It’s going to be a nuclear financial bomb. This doesn't make sense. "Material" is a term of art defined with regard to the current deal, there's no such thing as determining "the number of bots is material" in a general sense such that customers (I presume you mean advertisers) would automatically be allowed to sue. Sure, if Musk finds Twitter has historically lied that would be significant. But Twitter doesn't have a single "bot number". In specific circumstances they make specific calculations using defined procedures. For example, the number Musk is whining about uses active - not all - users as the denominator, so of course it's going to be lower than the "real" number of bots. Surprisingly to me, so far Musk hasn't provided an argument beyond this same sort of word salad. Maybe he's playing n-dimensional chess, but if Twitter sues him he'll presumably have to make his real secret arguments in open court. We'll see then.

remflight 4y ago
Of course it makes sense. “Material” is a financial term that is used all the time. It’s not a surprising term at all and fits here. Twitter doesn’t have to be caught in a lie. They can just be caught with having a materially different numbers of fake accounts from their stated numbers. If 25% of the amount you paid to Twitter for ads went to bots and fake accounts, you don’t think that you deserve a refund? You don’t think advertisers would take advantage of that to get refunds? You don’t think the SEC would be interested in this? The whole point is Musk’s team is going to dig up stuff that Twitter won’t want to fix because the cost to find and track it will overweigh the amount of money they make probably. But it will have ramifications in terms of things like refunds and customers leaving the platform entirely. It will make them look really bad. It’s inevitable.
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  > “Material” is a financial term that is used all the time. It’s not a surprising term at all and fits here. Yes, but it's only well-defined with regard to specific circumstances. It makes no sense to say something material to this deal will inherently be material to completely different circumstances like the contracts signed with advertisers or users.

phailhaus 4y ago

> Twitter can’t give Musk the data he needs to determine fake accounts. Twitter has already given Musk access to the "firehose of data". [1] Musk bragged about buying Twitter because of the bots. Nobody is going to believe that he suddenly cares now that there are too many, not after he waived due diligence and set the buying price as a 420 joke. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-twitter-firehose/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-twitter-firehose/

remflight 4y ago
Read the letter from the lawyers. They gave Musk’s team limited access via api until a couple of days ago despite asking for it since may. The limited access was rate limited and had other restrictions. It’s obvious that with a rate limit the amount of data is not enough to do what they need to do.
- CogitoCogito 4y ago
  Okay if the issue was his access being rate-limited, then what's the issue now that it no longer is? So Musk is able to actually find the evidence he needs now right?