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As someone who thinks Twitter is a net negative for society, and only marginally better than Facebook, I must say if this case isn't a slam-dunk in Twitter's fa

by moogly 4y ago

As someone who thinks Twitter is a net negative for society, and only marginally better than Facebook, I must say if this case isn't a slam-dunk in Twitter's favor, something is really, incredibly rotten in the state of Denmark.

xhkkffbf 4y ago
A slam dunk? Oh, I don't know. The confusion over the bots is real. The financial value of all of these social networks is 100% dependent on the number of real eyeballs that can be sold to advertisers. They've been claiming less than 5% for years and all of a sudden, they started hedging their claims. Then the head of data science left. If you ask me, the real problem for the social networks is click fraud and this is just the first cut. Furthermore, now that Twitter has filed the law suit, the defendant (Musk) gets to ask for discovery to defend himself. Twitter is going to have to turn over the data anyway.
- kklisura 4y ago
  > Twitter is going to have to turn over the data anyway. But Twitter already did this, at least in one part. From the lawsuit: > On or about June 9, 2022, Musk’s counsel indicated that granting access to 30 days’ worth of historical firehose data would satisfy Musk’s request for the firehose data. So, on June 15, the company gave Musk’s team secure access to that raw data — about 49 tebibytes’ worth. It did so even though the merger agreement did not require the sharing of this information.
- nocoiner 4y ago
  Here’s an excerpt from Twitter’s 2014 annual report. I think they’ve been pretty clear for quite a while that there is subjectivity and judgment that goes into their estimates of monetized users that are bots. “The numbers of active users and timeline views presented in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are based on internal company data. While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring usage and user engagement across our large user base around the world. For example, there are a number of false or spam accounts in existence on our platform. We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that false or spam accounts represented less than 5% of our MAUs as of December 31, 2014. 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.” The case isn’t a slam dunk only because public company merger agreements aren’t normally signed on a whim and/or for the lulz. Even here, where there’s a very clear specific performance obligation, Delaware chancellors normally don’t love enforcing specific performance (though they absolutely will, especially in the case of a buyer who’s obviously trying to avoid its contractual obligations based on a pretext). The real tension here comes from the cap on damages, the chance that Musk blows up the committed debt financing, and the quantum of damages actually suffered by Twitter shareholders if the deal doesn’t close. Those are the actually interesting issues that will get hashed out in court - not some baseless claims about bots that could have and should have been diligenced by the buyer prior to signing a binding $44 billion acquisition agreement.
  - vba616 4y ago
    >I think they’ve been pretty clear for quite a while that there is subjectivity and judgment Sure, but the fundamental point is that the 5% figure is calculated after they have id'ed all the "bots" that they can from the denominator. EM has been representing 5% as the percentage of spam relative to everything on Twitter. If that's how you interpret it, it sounds unbelievable. But it's not what they reported to the SEC at all. They are saying that after every bot is eliminated from their count of legit users via automated methods, manual sampling suggests 5% false negatives in the remainder. I don't know what EM is up to or what the end game is, but he's clearly playing to members of the public who can be misdirected. If he really is playing 7-dimension chess, then it suggests that he is building political cover for something - perhaps something outrageous that will happen in court.
- vba616 4y ago
  >The confusion over the bots is real. The confusion is real, but it's entirely due to EM's "fake news" campaign. The core of EM's PR campaign against Twitter has been to represent the denominator of the 5% figure as all "Twitterers" rather than mDAUs. This may work on any member of the public who is sympathetic, conspiratorial minded, and not interested in details. But do you think it will get him anything in court? I read Twitter's complaint, and I will say they did not seem to be laser focused on the question of whether there is an obvious contradiction between Twitter being 90% bots and the 5% figure in SEC filings. If I were their lawyers, I would emphasize that there is no contradiction at all because the latter is a percentage of mDAUs...but apparently in their judgement it's not a particularly essential part of the complaint.
- MrMan 4y ago
  The confusion is definitely manufactured

by moogly 4y ago

xhkkffbf 4y ago

A slam dunk? Oh, I don't know. The confusion over the bots is real. The financial value of all of these social networks is 100% dependent on the number of real eyeballs that can be sold to advertisers. They've been claiming less than 5% for years and all of a sudden, they started hedging their claims. Then the head of data science left. If you ask me, the real problem for the social networks is click fraud and this is just the first cut. Furthermore, now that Twitter has filed the law suit, the defendant (Musk) gets to ask for discovery to defend himself. Twitter is going to have to turn over the data anyway.

kklisura 4y ago
> Twitter is going to have to turn over the data anyway. But Twitter already did this, at least in one part. From the lawsuit: > On or about June 9, 2022, Musk’s counsel indicated that granting access to 30 days’ worth of historical firehose data would satisfy Musk’s request for the firehose data. So, on June 15, the company gave Musk’s team secure access to that raw data — about 49 tebibytes’ worth. It did so even though the merger agreement did not require the sharing of this information.
nocoiner 4y ago
Here’s an excerpt from Twitter’s 2014 annual report. I think they’ve been pretty clear for quite a while that there is subjectivity and judgment that goes into their estimates of monetized users that are bots. “The numbers of active users and timeline views presented in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are based on internal company data. While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring usage and user engagement across our large user base around the world. For example, there are a number of false or spam accounts in existence on our platform. We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that false or spam accounts represented less than 5% of our MAUs as of December 31, 2014. 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.” The case isn’t a slam dunk only because public company merger agreements aren’t normally signed on a whim and/or for the lulz. Even here, where there’s a very clear specific performance obligation, Delaware chancellors normally don’t love enforcing specific performance (though they absolutely will, especially in the case of a buyer who’s obviously trying to avoid its contractual obligations based on a pretext). The real tension here comes from the cap on damages, the chance that Musk blows up the committed debt financing, and the quantum of damages actually suffered by Twitter shareholders if the deal doesn’t close. Those are the actually interesting issues that will get hashed out in court - not some baseless claims about bots that could have and should have been diligenced by the buyer prior to signing a binding $44 billion acquisition agreement.
- vba616 4y ago
  >I think they’ve been pretty clear for quite a while that there is subjectivity and judgment Sure, but the fundamental point is that the 5% figure is calculated after they have id'ed all the "bots" that they can from the denominator. EM has been representing 5% as the percentage of spam relative to everything on Twitter. If that's how you interpret it, it sounds unbelievable. But it's not what they reported to the SEC at all. They are saying that after every bot is eliminated from their count of legit users via automated methods, manual sampling suggests 5% false negatives in the remainder. I don't know what EM is up to or what the end game is, but he's clearly playing to members of the public who can be misdirected. If he really is playing 7-dimension chess, then it suggests that he is building political cover for something - perhaps something outrageous that will happen in court.
vba616 4y ago
>The confusion over the bots is real. The confusion is real, but it's entirely due to EM's "fake news" campaign. The core of EM's PR campaign against Twitter has been to represent the denominator of the 5% figure as all "Twitterers" rather than mDAUs. This may work on any member of the public who is sympathetic, conspiratorial minded, and not interested in details. But do you think it will get him anything in court? I read Twitter's complaint, and I will say they did not seem to be laser focused on the question of whether there is an obvious contradiction between Twitter being 90% bots and the 5% figure in SEC filings. If I were their lawyers, I would emphasize that there is no contradiction at all because the latter is a percentage of mDAUs...but apparently in their judgement it's not a particularly essential part of the complaint.
MrMan 4y ago
The confusion is definitely manufactured