4 ms·

I think a lot of this is... bad. But not bad bad. It's bad in the sense of "This company is rubbish and Mudge clearly fought with Agrawal" but not bad in the se

I think a lot of this is... bad. But not bad bad. It's bad in the sense of "This company is rubbish and Mudge clearly fought with Agrawal" but not bad in the sense of "This company is clearly doing illegal things". For example, Mudge claiming he was ordered not to present a report to the board. He might not be happy about that, but that's perfectly fine, it's not down to him to chose what the CEO decides should be presented to the board, you can have perfectly reasonable disagreements about what's appropriate and at the end of the day the call is down to the CEO. The fact that there are other cases where board members intervene to tell Mudge this reinforces that. Or the claim that the CEO instructed Mudge to send the board documents they both knew were misleading. This is an explosive claim, but it seems highly unlikely that Mudge can prove Agrawal knew the documents to be false, and misleading is impossible to know, because he can't know the context they were presented in. I think it's just highly unlikely that Twitter's CEO is so incompetent that he's just moustache twirling and lying to everyone, it seems highly likely this will come down to Agrawal having a different opinion or interpretation of the facts. What really undermines the claim is when we get to this section: >Agrawal’s tweet was a lie. In fact, Agrawal knows very well that Twitter executives are not incentivized to accurately “detect” or report total spam bots on the platform. Mudge is massively over-reaching here. At best, an argument can be made that at some point there are some perverse incentives where allowing spam bots could inflate numbers to make the company look successful. But even if that argument were convincing, which it isn't, Agrawal clearly doesn't believe it. It's trivial to make Agrawal's argument here. That's why this looks like big claims, but unsupported claims. Because where it's clear that people can reasonably believe what they say but disagree with each other, Mudge claims one side must be lying. What could easily presented as openness, honesty and transparency about the challenges the company faces("Mudge asked the Head of Site... what the underlying spam bot numbers were. Their response was "We don't really know.”) - Mudge basslessly claims this is essentially proves they were acting in bad faith. This all looks designed to be explosive on first sight, but not actually correct in the detail.

peteradio 4y ago
> it's not down to him to chose what the CEO decides should be presented to the board, Isn't it? Does the CEO get to carte blanche decide to hide security holes from the board?
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  In practical terms pretty much yes. The CEO gets pretty wide latitude. Let's start from a pretty standard premise - there are security holes in every company. Clearly we're not going to disclose every single one to the board. So it's up to the CEO to make the judgement on when something rises to the importance of needing to notify the board or needs input from the board. The board is there for strategy, not for operations. So as long as there's nothing relevant to the high level strategy, there's no real reason to tell them about individual operational issues. An obvious example here, is that Mudge cites that Agrawal tells the board that they have end point management, but Mudge knows the end point management shows lots of devices aren't secure. The end points being insecure isn't a problem to bring to the board, as long as you have a strategy to rectify it- which presumably they do, since that's why they've instituted end point management in the first place. And remember, the board knows that they've got security issues and they're addressing them, because the board approved them hiring Mudge as head of security in the first place. So the question is why the Head of Security thinks he needs to go and advise the board of all of the operational issues he's tackling. They know there are issues, that's why he's employed.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    A strategy like "manage endpoints" would not be satisfied if people are actively able to avoid it, no? Wouldn't that mean the board's strategy is being ignored and evidence of it concealed by the CEO?
    - SilverBirch 4y ago
      The question isn't "Right at this moment is everything good" it's "do we have a strategy to get to the point where everything is good". So sure, the first thing you're going to find when you implement endpoint management is lots of devices are breaching the requirements, the important thing is to then address that - not to just go back to the board and say "things are really bad".
      - peteradio 4y ago
infamia 4y ago
> At best, an argument can be made that at some point there are some perverse incentives where allowing spam bots could inflate numbers to make the company look successful. But even if that argument were convincing, which it isn't, Agrawal clearly doesn't believe it. It is clear to me that Argrawal is trying to obfuscate and confuse. Every time he is asked about the total number of bots on Twitter, Argrawal subtlety changes the subject to mDAU. He knows this is not the same as total users, but he chooses to change the subject and pretend he's answering the question. This is very shady in my book, and his attempt at subterfuge and lack of transparency is very troubling. I've seen other CEOs do similar things when they don't want to talk about something potentially damaging. The fact that Argrawal artlessly tried to smear Mudge earlier in the week does not make me trust that he has good and forthright intentions. Argawal seems very shady, and I wonder how you can trust him?
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago
  It's not shady because it's the thing they report to shareholders. He knows it isn't the same thing, but so do the people asking the question. He isn't obliged to engage on every question in the exact way the questioner asks.
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  It's not some subtle sleight of hand, the number of bots on twitter is not what is claimed in the legally required filings. We can argue till the cows come home about how many bots they are, but it's not relevant to the legal wranglings that are going on around Musk buying twitter. Musk is saying "The bot number is higher than you're saying" and Agrawal is saying "I've never made any claim on the bot number", and Musk might be right that there are lots of bots, but if he is right, it just highlights how dumb it was to make an unsolicited bid to buy the company with no due diligence. And this isn't just some arbitrary thing that Agrawal has made up either, there's one very specific reason why you would care about mDAUs not bots. mDAUs are the number of people you can advertise to, and Twitter's revenue is advertising. It's like saying Twitter has an army of 10,000 cats in it's basement. It might be true, but it's not relevant to the value of the business.

peteradio 4y ago

> it's not down to him to chose what the CEO decides should be presented to the board, Isn't it? Does the CEO get to carte blanche decide to hide security holes from the board?

SilverBirch 4y ago
In practical terms pretty much yes. The CEO gets pretty wide latitude. Let's start from a pretty standard premise - there are security holes in every company. Clearly we're not going to disclose every single one to the board. So it's up to the CEO to make the judgement on when something rises to the importance of needing to notify the board or needs input from the board. The board is there for strategy, not for operations. So as long as there's nothing relevant to the high level strategy, there's no real reason to tell them about individual operational issues. An obvious example here, is that Mudge cites that Agrawal tells the board that they have end point management, but Mudge knows the end point management shows lots of devices aren't secure. The end points being insecure isn't a problem to bring to the board, as long as you have a strategy to rectify it- which presumably they do, since that's why they've instituted end point management in the first place. And remember, the board knows that they've got security issues and they're addressing them, because the board approved them hiring Mudge as head of security in the first place. So the question is why the Head of Security thinks he needs to go and advise the board of all of the operational issues he's tackling. They know there are issues, that's why he's employed.
- peteradio 4y ago
  A strategy like "manage endpoints" would not be satisfied if people are actively able to avoid it, no? Wouldn't that mean the board's strategy is being ignored and evidence of it concealed by the CEO?
  - SilverBirch 4y ago
    The question isn't "Right at this moment is everything good" it's "do we have a strategy to get to the point where everything is good". So sure, the first thing you're going to find when you implement endpoint management is lots of devices are breaching the requirements, the important thing is to then address that - not to just go back to the board and say "things are really bad".
    - peteradio 4y ago

infamia 4y ago

> At best, an argument can be made that at some point there are some perverse incentives where allowing spam bots could inflate numbers to make the company look successful. But even if that argument were convincing, which it isn't, Agrawal clearly doesn't believe it. It is clear to me that Argrawal is trying to obfuscate and confuse. Every time he is asked about the total number of bots on Twitter, Argrawal subtlety changes the subject to mDAU. He knows this is not the same as total users, but he chooses to change the subject and pretend he's answering the question. This is very shady in my book, and his attempt at subterfuge and lack of transparency is very troubling. I've seen other CEOs do similar things when they don't want to talk about something potentially damaging. The fact that Argrawal artlessly tried to smear Mudge earlier in the week does not make me trust that he has good and forthright intentions. Argawal seems very shady, and I wonder how you can trust him?

danielmarkbruce 4y ago
It's not shady because it's the thing they report to shareholders. He knows it isn't the same thing, but so do the people asking the question. He isn't obliged to engage on every question in the exact way the questioner asks.
SilverBirch 4y ago
It's not some subtle sleight of hand, the number of bots on twitter is not what is claimed in the legally required filings. We can argue till the cows come home about how many bots they are, but it's not relevant to the legal wranglings that are going on around Musk buying twitter. Musk is saying "The bot number is higher than you're saying" and Agrawal is saying "I've never made any claim on the bot number", and Musk might be right that there are lots of bots, but if he is right, it just highlights how dumb it was to make an unsolicited bid to buy the company with no due diligence. And this isn't just some arbitrary thing that Agrawal has made up either, there's one very specific reason why you would care about mDAUs not bots. mDAUs are the number of people you can advertise to, and Twitter's revenue is advertising. It's like saying Twitter has an army of 10,000 cats in it's basement. It might be true, but it's not relevant to the value of the business.