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Have you read the merger agreement that Elon signed? Bot’s aren’t even mentioned. For anything about bots to be relevant to the deal Musk’s team don’t have to s

Have you read the merger agreement that Elon signed? Bot’s aren’t even mentioned. For anything about bots to be relevant to the deal Musk’s team don’t have to show that their were more bots but that Twitter’s statements about how they measure bots were incorrect and that the difference caused by those incorrect statements caused a materially adverse change. Since Twitter’s statements about bots are very specific and caveated (they label a small random sample, and estimate how many bots there are in the overall population using the number of bots they see in the sample, they use “significant judgement” and the number could be higher than what they say) it’s really hard to see Elon prevailing on this question. Matt Levine has a customarily excellent analysis here https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-18/elon-wants-to-fight-the-bots https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-18/elon-w...

gnicholas 4y ago
It seems like he overlooks the possibility that the bot issue would turn up evidence that Twitter's executives knew that it wasn't quite following the described protocols. But more generally, my point was that Musk could allege something that could create an MAE, and then the stock would drop and they'd end up arguing about whether the drop was due to the evidence, or due to the evidence's impact on people's belief that the deal would go through.
- fzzzy 4y ago
  tptacek's point is that a MAE has nothing to do with the stock price, only revenue or profitability.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    If advertisers discovered that there are more bots on Twitter than they were told (and consequently that the audience of real humans is smaller than they were told) future revenue would probably decrease.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    Sorry for not being clearer. I wasn't suggesting that the stock price dropping was an MAE. I was suggesting that the thing that caused the stock price to drop could arguably be an MAE. That's the whole point of my comment — there would be an argument about causation between the revelation/accusation, the stock price, and anticipated impact on revenue (as a sibling commenter pointed out).

gnicholas 4y ago

It seems like he overlooks the possibility that the bot issue would turn up evidence that Twitter's executives knew that it wasn't quite following the described protocols. But more generally, my point was that Musk could allege something that could create an MAE, and then the stock would drop and they'd end up arguing about whether the drop was due to the evidence, or due to the evidence's impact on people's belief that the deal would go through.

fzzzy 4y ago
tptacek's point is that a MAE has nothing to do with the stock price, only revenue or profitability.
- leereeves 4y ago
  If advertisers discovered that there are more bots on Twitter than they were told (and consequently that the audience of real humans is smaller than they were told) future revenue would probably decrease.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Sorry for not being clearer. I wasn't suggesting that the stock price dropping was an MAE. I was suggesting that the thing that caused the stock price to drop could arguably be an MAE. That's the whole point of my comment — there would be an argument about causation between the revelation/accusation, the stock price, and anticipated impact on revenue (as a sibling commenter pointed out).