4 ms·

Twitter is a public company (and has been for 9 years), and has maintained the 5% mDAU disclaimer in its required annual reports for years. I don't know off-han

Twitter is a public company (and has been for 9 years), and has maintained the 5% mDAU disclaimer in its required annual reports for years. I don't know off-hand how long it's been doing so, but probably at least 4 or 5 years. The allegation is saying not only that Twitter has been lying about that number--for years, on documents that land it in legal hot water if it's been lying--but that it was doing so specifically so that Musk would buy Twitter at an inflated price. The insane part is really that specific intent, not the lying about the numbers.

flerchin 4y ago
Well twitter would have been obscuring bots to obtain an inflated purchase price _by anyone_.
thr0wawayf00 4y ago
FWIW, academic research has questioned the 5% number for years. USC and IU put out a report 5 years ago that believed the upper bound for fake accounts was 15%[0]. This isn't a new allegation. 0: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-accounts-could-be-bots-says-study.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-ac...
- jcranmer 4y ago
  As explained many times by many people, the 5% is not the number of bots on Twitter. It is the false negative rate of Twitter's bot detection algorithms.
- kergonath 4y ago
  From your source: > our estimates suggest that between 9% and 15% of active Twitter accounts are bots From Twitter: “roughly 5% of our monetizable daily users are bots”. Both can be true at the same time, and it does not mean that Twitter lied.
  - dahdum 4y ago
    Twitter's lawsuit mentions this, stating only they know who is monetizable. IIRC Musk's lawyers deliberately push the same false equivalency in their filing.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      Musks lawyers aren't fans of being disbarred or other legal sanctions, so they carefully couched the language in their filing to say "Musk believes [the intentionally confusing, possibly false narrative about bots]" without providing evidence, which is weak sauce.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  5% of mDAU is a false negative rate. 5% of users is not a claim that Twitter made.
loceng 4y ago
... "but that it was doing so specifically so that Musk would buy Twitter at an inflated price." The insanity is people being perfectionistic in that it was specific intent to target him to buy it - even if it says "him" - it's absurd that people are taking that literally, and not simply to "make it seem valuable for someone to buy."

flerchin 4y ago

Well twitter would have been obscuring bots to obtain an inflated purchase price _by anyone_.

thr0wawayf00 4y ago

FWIW, academic research has questioned the 5% number for years. USC and IU put out a report 5 years ago that believed the upper bound for fake accounts was 15%[0]. This isn't a new allegation. 0: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-accounts-could-be-bots-says-study.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-ac...

jcranmer 4y ago
As explained many times by many people, the 5% is not the number of bots on Twitter. It is the false negative rate of Twitter's bot detection algorithms.
kergonath 4y ago
From your source: > our estimates suggest that between 9% and 15% of active Twitter accounts are bots From Twitter: “roughly 5% of our monetizable daily users are bots”. Both can be true at the same time, and it does not mean that Twitter lied.
- dahdum 4y ago
  Twitter's lawsuit mentions this, stating only they know who is monetizable. IIRC Musk's lawyers deliberately push the same false equivalency in their filing.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    Musks lawyers aren't fans of being disbarred or other legal sanctions, so they carefully couched the language in their filing to say "Musk believes [the intentionally confusing, possibly false narrative about bots]" without providing evidence, which is weak sauce.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jjoonathan 4y ago
5% of mDAU is a false negative rate. 5% of users is not a claim that Twitter made.

loceng 4y ago

... "but that it was doing so specifically so that Musk would buy Twitter at an inflated price." The insanity is people being perfectionistic in that it was specific intent to target him to buy it - even if it says "him" - it's absurd that people are taking that literally, and not simply to "make it seem valuable for someone to buy."