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Paragraph 15 is amusing in that it undermines their weird attempt to connect to current affairs without much basis - it comes right out and says "executives are

Paragraph 15 is amusing in that it undermines their weird attempt to connect to current affairs without much basis - it comes right out and says "executives are incentivized to avoid counting spam bots as mDAU" yet the greater thrust of the section is that Musk's dispute of the 5% number - a number based on "mDAU" - is generally "correct." That seems extremely twisted: Musk is claiming Twitter claimed something they didn't, Mudge's claim here is that Twitter execs are highly incentivized to be honest about that number they actually claim. In terms of "total" bot accounts... it's a free service with open signup on the fucking internet. You aren't gonna crack down on that effectively without draconian measures that few people really want. Twitter "intentionally prioritized" growing the base of users they were confident in showing ads to since that's the core of their business? Yawn. Company focuses on what actually makes them money, seems responsible of them to their stakeholders! If the bot "problem" got bad enough that they couldn't monetize, they'd be incentived to fix it; they shouldn't necessarily spend millions on trying to fix it just because people complain. There are bots on Twitter, news at 11, this supports the idea that Twitter wasn't lying in their financial reporting. So why are they leading with this BS part? The other sections are much more interesting.

danielmarkbruce 4y ago
The first 20 pages are basically garbage - as you say, Twitter made it clear what they were measuring and communicated it. He's basically saying "the execs didn't prioritize what I thought was important! It's illegal!"
nrmitchi 4y ago
When this story first started, there were obviously comments of "this seems timed to support Musk's argument", and counter points of "this would have been in progress long before Musk's offer and has nothing to do with it". There being an entire section titled "Lying about Bots to Elon Musk" makes this entire document seem flimsy at best. It's entire possible to make whistleblower compaints about security issues at Twitter without trying to testify to an impending lawsuit.
random314 4y ago
The fact that the document began with 20 pages of word twisting to pretend that Parag lied to Elon, while no such thing happened is really bizarre. I thought the whistle blowing was about state actors being granted 100% access to user data. Instead it dedicates the first 20 pages whinging about a non issue. I lost any motivation to read the docs any further. He also complains about data center ops quality at Twitter. While Mudge pretended this is extremely unusual, I have never worked at any fortune 500 that would meet his criteria of fault tolerance, and I have worked at several. With original architects disappearing and employee churn this is impossible. And why does he think this needs to be whistle blown? He sounds really immature. Is there any thing of interest beyond the elon musk drama?
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago
  Exactly. It's a bunch of stock standard issues.

danielmarkbruce 4y ago

The first 20 pages are basically garbage - as you say, Twitter made it clear what they were measuring and communicated it. He's basically saying "the execs didn't prioritize what I thought was important! It's illegal!"

nrmitchi 4y ago

When this story first started, there were obviously comments of "this seems timed to support Musk's argument", and counter points of "this would have been in progress long before Musk's offer and has nothing to do with it". There being an entire section titled "Lying about Bots to Elon Musk" makes this entire document seem flimsy at best. It's entire possible to make whistleblower compaints about security issues at Twitter without trying to testify to an impending lawsuit.

random314 4y ago

The fact that the document began with 20 pages of word twisting to pretend that Parag lied to Elon, while no such thing happened is really bizarre. I thought the whistle blowing was about state actors being granted 100% access to user data. Instead it dedicates the first 20 pages whinging about a non issue. I lost any motivation to read the docs any further. He also complains about data center ops quality at Twitter. While Mudge pretended this is extremely unusual, I have never worked at any fortune 500 that would meet his criteria of fault tolerance, and I have worked at several. With original architects disappearing and employee churn this is impossible. And why does he think this needs to be whistle blown? He sounds really immature. Is there any thing of interest beyond the elon musk drama?

danielmarkbruce 4y ago
Exactly. It's a bunch of stock standard issues.