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You're missing that they never promised that there are only 5% bots. They said they estimate five percent based on their internal research, which is completely

You're missing that they never promised that there are only 5% bots. They said they estimate five percent based on their internal research, which is completely true as far as we're currently aware. Unless you can prove they intentionally faked their own internal investigation, you'll have a very hard time proving fraud. Also, then there is the fact that Elon apparently even didn't believe this number. So even if he proves it's faked and the court agrees that this is actually a major dealbreaker (which is already near impossible), Twitter could still argue that he was completely aware of the bot situation when he made the offer.

loceng 4y ago
So if you have a home inspector inspect a house before you buy it, and they say "yeah, it looks good" - but it turns out they didn't actually investigate in a way that arguably involves an adequate amount of integrity or in a reasonable way to determine as accurately as possible that everything is sound - then you don't think that home inspector isn't liable? And what if the professional organization who has the responsibility of regulatory oversight of that profession, what if they're been lacking and not being responsible as they are supposed to be, allowing for poor analysis as the standard - are they guilt-free too?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > if you have a home inspector inspect a house before you buy it, and they say "yeah, it looks good" - but it turns out they didn't actually investigate Home inspectors follow well-established practices. Bot estimation for Twitter has no such analog. The closest might be the seller saying they've seen rats but never looked into it. You say fine, I'm buying to clean it up anyway; waive inspection rights; commit and then discover a rat's nest. Unless you can show the seller knew about the problem and lied about it, you're going to get your case thrown out of court. Now add multimillion dollar teams of lawyers and bankers advising each side prior to entering into the transaction and we have an approximation of the stupidity of this case.
  - loceng 4y ago
    "Bot estimation for Twitter has no such analog." And that's acceptable there isn't well-established/widely accepted practices? Certainly Twitter and SEC will argue that to protect themselves from scrutiny and legal issues they likely deserve.
    - _djo_ 4y ago
      Yes it is, because Twitter has no close analogues. There’s nothing to base an industry-wide standard on. All company figures involve some level of trust that they’re based on correct processes as signed off by audit firms. For areas of material interest you’re supposed to do due diligence before signing final offers, but Musk explicitly waived that for some bizarre reason.
      - loceng 4y ago
        If you can't with 100% certainty determine the number of real users you have you shouldn't be putting out any number, and second to that, you have to be open to challenges that "your"/their analysis isn't reasonable; from what it sounds like, based on what Elon had said or alluded to, the way Twitter determined bot % was they had staff manually and "randomly" select literally just 100 accounts, and based on their own observations, decided if accounts were bots or not. If that's true, the obvious problem with that, is bots are designed to mimic to blend in and look like humans - to have the same or similar behaviour patterns to not be outside an expected range of behaviours. So, what might really be going on is: Twitter's able to detect that less than 5% of users are unsophisticated bots, but they're unable to determine how much of the remaining 95% are sophisticated bots that accurately enough mimic human behaviour; and so it's not possible to genuinely say "less than 5% are bots."
        _djo_ 4y ago
        You have not done enough work to understand this issue before picking a side, and it shows. For one, this is not about what percentage of Twitter users are bots. Nor have you accurately or fairly described Twitter’s methodology for verifying their mDAU figures.

loceng 4y ago

So if you have a home inspector inspect a house before you buy it, and they say "yeah, it looks good" - but it turns out they didn't actually investigate in a way that arguably involves an adequate amount of integrity or in a reasonable way to determine as accurately as possible that everything is sound - then you don't think that home inspector isn't liable? And what if the professional organization who has the responsibility of regulatory oversight of that profession, what if they're been lacking and not being responsible as they are supposed to be, allowing for poor analysis as the standard - are they guilt-free too?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> if you have a home inspector inspect a house before you buy it, and they say "yeah, it looks good" - but it turns out they didn't actually investigate Home inspectors follow well-established practices. Bot estimation for Twitter has no such analog. The closest might be the seller saying they've seen rats but never looked into it. You say fine, I'm buying to clean it up anyway; waive inspection rights; commit and then discover a rat's nest. Unless you can show the seller knew about the problem and lied about it, you're going to get your case thrown out of court. Now add multimillion dollar teams of lawyers and bankers advising each side prior to entering into the transaction and we have an approximation of the stupidity of this case.
- loceng 4y ago
  "Bot estimation for Twitter has no such analog." And that's acceptable there isn't well-established/widely accepted practices? Certainly Twitter and SEC will argue that to protect themselves from scrutiny and legal issues they likely deserve.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    Yes it is, because Twitter has no close analogues. There’s nothing to base an industry-wide standard on. All company figures involve some level of trust that they’re based on correct processes as signed off by audit firms. For areas of material interest you’re supposed to do due diligence before signing final offers, but Musk explicitly waived that for some bizarre reason.
    - loceng 4y ago
      If you can't with 100% certainty determine the number of real users you have you shouldn't be putting out any number, and second to that, you have to be open to challenges that "your"/their analysis isn't reasonable; from what it sounds like, based on what Elon had said or alluded to, the way Twitter determined bot % was they had staff manually and "randomly" select literally just 100 accounts, and based on their own observations, decided if accounts were bots or not. If that's true, the obvious problem with that, is bots are designed to mimic to blend in and look like humans - to have the same or similar behaviour patterns to not be outside an expected range of behaviours. So, what might really be going on is: Twitter's able to detect that less than 5% of users are unsophisticated bots, but they're unable to determine how much of the remaining 95% are sophisticated bots that accurately enough mimic human behaviour; and so it's not possible to genuinely say "less than 5% are bots."
      - _djo_ 4y ago
        You have not done enough work to understand this issue before picking a side, and it shows. For one, this is not about what percentage of Twitter users are bots. Nor have you accurately or fairly described Twitter’s methodology for verifying their mDAU figures.