I bet you did thing there'd be otters in this story.
Anyway, it's not the number of bot accounts that matters. It's how much we the real Twitter users are seeing them. Twitter has given out this 5% estimate, but that's the estimate of the number of bots. Are they estimating the number of views that go to bots?
Are advertisers just looking at the number of "daily users," so that they care which ones are real and not bots, or do they care how long these real users spend gazing at the page and how far they scroll? I would think that number of daily users is a stupid basis for advertising, since it's so easy to click on the page and then leave immediately. If you impulsively click in, then see that it's junk, you may leave before seeing any advertising at all.
In any case, it's important to see that Twitter might want to avoid the lawsuit even if it expects to win. Presumably, Musk knows that and knows how to make the lawsuit burdensome, and perhaps he can win while losing if he achieves the goal of foisting transparency on Twitter.
ADDED: I wrote that as if what matters is the number of view that go to bots, but on reflection, maybe it's the number of "views" that come from bots.
Posts
73 comments:
It does seem like a bit of a knife edge Twitter is walking. They're saying that it's ok to be a bot so long as people see your posts. The distinction bot vs. person is not important to advertisers--a bot with a million followers is just as valuable as a person with a million followers. If you don't have a lot of followers, then you need to be a person or you're providing no value.
Ok. Fine. Except for this--if they're not screening for bots so much as for non-valuable accounts, then how do they know how of my million followers aren't also bots so that in the end, I'm still giving you nothing of value? Either Twitter boots the bots or advertisers can't know what they're getting for their money.
Elon tweeted this out last night.
Profiles in manufacturing consensus, example #17,232. Anyone who can't see that this IS the business model for all social media is blind. Consensus production is their business.
There otter be a law or something!!!
This litigation will take years and Musk has more money than Twitter.
Spitbslling here; maybe Musk's only goal was to pull the wax paper off the top of Twitter's casserole. If he can make the case it was not accurately represented....doesn't buy it and doesn't have to mess with it and watches it flame out.
2 points. Commercially sensitive documents are produced under a confidentiality ("protective") order and not publicized, sometimes even if it goes to trial. So don't see that as an immediate factor in Twitter's thinking.
Second, Musk's promised payments go to the shareholders, so Twitter constrained in not doing all it can to make good on enforcing that promise, or the directors risk personal liability to the shareholders (in that event, insurance may or may not cover them). Twitter just hired its third big law firm to take the fight to Musk.
Musk can complete the purchase and make Twitter as transparent as he desires.
Automatons for leverage and benefits.
T]he company is measuring and disclosing problematic accounts, not their activity or impressions — so a small number of accounts might have a large footprint of views...."
Is that how @libsoftiktok found themselves in twitters crosshairs?
I didn't realize Twitter had ads. Like with Reddit, my ad blocker automatically suppresses their ads. If they want my (theoretical) advertising dollars they need to have ad-blocked users restricted from using the site. Every small town newspaper in the country already does this.
Smells awfully briar patchy to me. As if Elon is saying, "Please don't drag me into litigation where y'all will be obligated to back up your BS claims under oath. Please don't do that!"
Readering said...
Musk can complete the purchase and make Twitter as transparent as he desires.
Leftists hate transparency when it is applied to them.
Those SEC reporting requirements only apply to people Readering disagrees with. That is how the law works in prog world.
If they didn't have double standards they would have no standards at all.
I knew in my heart this deal would never happen. Western organizations move in one direction only -- from right to left. Progressives control the cultural machinery, and they don't give it up, ever.
Musk is crazy like a fox. I suspect that this was his intended outcome, all along. Don't forget that this guy was one of the early pioneers of doing business on the Internet, and has probably forgotten more than the average twit about the realities thereof.
My money is on Musk, in all this. I think he's going to do a lot of damage to both Twitter and FaceBook, because of the notice and notoriety that he's going to achieve doing this. Because, if as much of Twitter's traffic is faked-up bot BS, that calls into question a lot of what FaceBook has been claiming, as well.
IMHO, the current state of the Internet is that it's in the midst of another bubble, and that when it finally deflates, a lot of people and things are going to be left high and dry. Not the least of which will be the majority of the mainstream media.
I keep coming back to the idea that Musk's goal is the destruction of Twitter. If free speech is really his primary motivation, weakening Twitter to the point that another entity can rise up and compete would be a valid plan.
Why, I otter...
Musk ran when he saw the bepenised twitter behind the curtain. Now Twitter threatens to out Musk as tweetphobic, in court depositions.
"Twitter calculates its estimate that unwanted bots make up less than 5 percent of what it terms monetizable average daily users, those which the company feels comfortable charging advertisers to reach."
Comfortable, my ass! In the real world, Twitter is free to charge any ad fee it pleases, so this garbage about bots - Twitter bots, foreign bots and even the number of fake users changes nothing. Of all people, Musk must know this but perhaps what he doesn't understand, as primarily a seller to the US government, is that Twitter is consumer-driven. Tesla is also consumer-driven, but even with major price discounts paid by taxpayers, the EV company has shown a black bottom line for less than five years of its history.
I do not doubt that Twitter is gaming the data to its advantage. Silicon Valley and other tech companies have routinely done this since the start of time. Way back in the first dotcom bubble, Enron collapsed for commodity manipulation/false pricing. One report said they kept a room full of staff on the phone talking to each other. They had no sales/customers, but Wall St. visitors would see a room full of busy people and come away excited. Automated data manipulation surely began as soon as the technology permitted it, for end users/customers gain a derivative financial advantages even if the host site is not aware of the fraud.
Twitter has an outsized influence on the public square. A very small number of people claim to be "THE Public opinion"
Rush explained this a few times on air. He did the work to find out how many people were represented in the boycott movement. He found out a couple of dozen people could look lie 100,000 to advertisers, motivating them to isolate from an individual or company. Rush did all the work, so he could explain it to his advertisers, and show that twitter in no way measured public opinion. Thats why the mob always failed to cancel Rush.
I see twitter as nothing but reporters and media types self promoting.
"... coordination among humans to artificially amplify a tweet,"
as opposed to coordination among Leftists to naturally amplify a tweet.
I have yet to see evidence that Elon is a legal whiz and isn't wading far into the deep end of the pool.
Connvincing a judge is not the same as convincing your stans.
Sure, he got an amusing tweet out of this yesterday, but as the sale has a non-disparagement clause it might not all go the way he expects in court.
Readering said...Commercially sensitive documents are produced under a confidentiality ("protective") order and not publicized, sometimes even if it goes to trial. So don't see that as an immediate factor in Twitter's thinking.
Musk isn't a reporter, he's an entrepreneur. What matters is that he gets to find out. Whether we do is, as you say, not an immediate factor in his thinking.
Musk can complete the purchase and make Twitter as transparent as he desires.
He sure can, but, as you say, he needs to complete the purchase first. Would you buy a house without an inspection?
Achilles said...
Readering said...
Musk can complete the purchase and make Twitter as transparent as he desires.
Leftists hate transparency when it is applied to them.
Those SEC reporting requirements only apply to people Readering disagrees with. That is how the law works in prog world.
If they didn't have double standards they would have no standards at all.
You are way out of your league making dumb comments like these. Readering makes reasoned comments and you attack him with a "Hee-Haw-like" quote. Indeed, "if it weren't for bad luck, you'd have no luck at all."
Your populist view of the world is certainly not better than a progressive viewpoint from the conservative perch I sit on.
I think Musk was initially serious about buying twitter, but changed his mind when his intentions hurt Tesla. He's a smart guy and could probably run Twitter well if he tried, but no one plays this kind of 'eight-dimensional chess' -- the ascription of a complex plan to these actions is just as silly as when people thought Trump was some master politician.
Musk can complete the purchase and make Twitter as transparent as he desires.
You have to buy it to see what's in it.
your only reason for your position is that you are rooting for Twitter and hating Musk. You have absolutely no rational argument to defend someone having to buy something without first knowing if it is as the seller claims. Otherwise you would be a used car salesman's dream.
"Can I have my mechanic inspect this car before I buy?"
.
"No, but once you buy it you are free to have as many mechanics inspect it as you wish."
I've said it often. Althouse needs to recruit better liberals.
"Donna Hitscherich, a Columbia Business School professor, said Musk’s filing will naturally raise questions about why he lost interest... "
Lost interest. As if he was walking down to the driveway one morning to pick up the paper and said, "Look! A cat." and blew up the deal.
It has been suggested that Musk will take out a MAC defense. A material adverse change. It is more likely that he will claim a material misrepresentation by Twitter. Inflated customers.
Musk seems pretty damn confident that 5% number is fraudulent. And...he's laughing about it openly on twitter. I'm pretty sure he has better I.T. people and programmers working for him that the woke Twitter employees working from home.
He's smarter than they are. The dude builds reusable rockets that land back on earth standing straight up. The Twitter thing is a side job for him. He's batting them around like a baby seal. He's built Tesla and Space X to get to Mars. Twitter is child's play to him.
Twitter became the US and World townhall when Trump ran in 2016. Then they ban their biggest account. And...they ban other HUGE conservative accounts. They are in cahoots with the gubmint. It's the only way they can get away with what they are doing.
They're 5% claim in fraudulent. They know it. Musk knows it.
It's fun watching him mess with the liberal woke with his F-U money. Cool dude.
It's is crazy to try and tank a business in which you hold a 15% equity position in. That stake is worth about $5.7 Billion If he causes the stock price to drop 50%, he loses nearly 3 billion dollars. He has to have a different plan. It might be to sue the pants off the principals for fiduciary negligence. The stock takes a hit but he recoups his money and only the board pays the bill.
"Commercially sensitive documents are produced under a confidentiality ("protective") order and not publicized, sometimes even if it goes to trial. So don't see that as an immediate factor in Twitter's thinking."
Good point. There's no way the SEC will ever get hold of those docs. Carry on!
Achilles said...
Readering said...
Musk can complete the purchase and make Twitter as transparent as he desires.
Leftists hate transparency when it is applied to them.
Those SEC reporting requirements only apply to people Readering disagrees with. That is how the law works in prog world.
If they didn't have double standards they would have no standards at all.
You are way out of your league making dumb comments like these. Readering makes reasoned comments and you attack him with a "Hee-Haw-like" quote. Indeed, "if it weren't for bad luck, you'd have no luck at all."
Your populist view of the world is certainly not better than a progressive viewpoint from the conservative perch I sit on.
Rude to use the account to sell the post but not give a link.
You want Otters?
I confess. My Twitter persona loves the otter bots.
When the stocks start dropping, and the shareholders become nervous, the sell-off will be magnificent. Twitter doesn't have a chance.
recall not too long ago the collective left were mighty butt hurt over Elon buying Twitter.
Frequently, when deals become difficult, they are renegotiated through litigation. In this instance, Twitter cannot risk the outcome of discovery, the oversight of the SEC, and the massive damages from shareholder lawsuits that will follow disclosure of the fraud being used on advertisers.
Either Twitter offers a huge discount or it likely disappears forever.
Democracy dies in darkness of the Twitterverse.
Diverse sanctuaries of irregularities, fraud, misinformation, disinformation, and steering.
Musk foresees an economic crash. He wants to keep his liquidity.
twitter is like a kamikazi scotsman, elon was just trying to defuse it, it's top executives have admitted they don't believe in free speech, this was clear in the minds of the designers of the internet like berniers-lee, they only wanted progs to use it,
Thinging it over, we otter respect otters and other living things, at least that's what I thing.
Sea Otters or River Otters?
("What do you mean, an African Swallow or a European Swallow?")
Finding out the level of actual eyeballs present at any one time was never in Twatter's financial interest, and it still isn't. Same applies to Faceplant, Instabore, Gabfast etal.
If you were Musk and wanted to negotiate a lower price, wouldn't you do this? Right now it is in the interest of both parties to negotiate a lower price and settle. The open issue is How Much Lower. I'd like to see an estimate of how long this litigation is likely to run if there is no settlement. Twitter is in a tough position -- they have announced they are for sale and they have no buyer. At some point their major shareholders are going to push for a CEO and board that can get them out of this mess.
"he core of the presentation was about how Twitter calculates its estimate that unwanted bots make up less than 5 percent of what it terms monetizable average daily users"
That's alot of qualifiers on a simple concept of whether or not an account represents a unique user with their own views and/or contributing content.
...
Most of the internets problems today will be fixed by a unifying identification platform that promotes personal authentication with either a tokenized, verified psuedonym or a tokenized, verified identity along with controlled promotion of that identity - that can be carried across social platforms.
Once that central ID mgmt gets fixed, so many of these issues will dissapear.
I don't think Musk is particularly interested in Twitter, but I think he finds its premise revolting and ultimately damaging to his interests. For a guy obsessed with getting a colony on Mars, I can think of few things that would be as boring, unsatisfying, and mundane as wanting to take over an earthly virtual cesspit like Twitter. He left his interest in the Internet World behind when he sold out of Paypal. And after all, his achievements in SpaceX and Tesla far overshadow what he did with Paypal.
So I'm betting he has a team lined up to take Twitter's reform over for him, and the purpose of this move is to get a better price - which I would give him a 75% chance of securing once the dirty laundry gets inspected, whether it's out in the open or in the parlor, with just the adults present.
he is the otter of his own fate,
So...let's say Musk buys it and discovers/publicizes substantial cheating prior to his takeover. What, if any, legal jeopardy awaits top execs?
"further darken employee morale" (WaPo).
That's some systemic racism from the Lefties at the WaPo right there. And convention would have called for "dampen" so the choice was overt.
The real thing is that Twitter put the bot/fake account estimates in SEC filings. If shown they knew it was larger, then while unlikely to be at risk of prosecution as long as they remain in Democrat favor, they do have some shareholder issues.
The current state of the stock market makes the original deal quite literally impossible. There is no way, not even a court order, to make someone buy a company for money he doesn't have.
Once this is understood, everything else is just a fight about how much less money Twitter is going to have to accept, whether rather less money with a Musk purchase, or very much less as a breakup fee.
Every other "issue", including any and all possible court fights on what terms dragging out a resolution who know how long, is merely about leverage over how much less Twitter is going to have to take.
Elon will buy Twitter.
He just doesn’t want to pay $52 for an $11 dollar stock.
There will be a compromise.
'I bet you did thing there'd be otters in this story.'
I otter have known better...
"further darken employee morale" (WaPo).
That's some systemic racism from the Lefties at the WaPo right there.
The back... black hole... whore h/t NAACP controversy.
WaPo is playing with a double-edged scalpel. Twitter should cancel their accounts.
Sweet Jesus! We've got the "Triumverate Of Insurmountable Business Ignorance", gadfly-readering-Dumb Lefty Mark, chiming in together and creating a Crescendo Of Dumb that is so breathtakingly wrong, that it makes you wonder if its not Purposeful Parody of leftists.
But its not.
It appears readering is counting on an obama judge to put the screws to Musk...in which case...what? Musk is forced to pull $1B out of his sofa to pay the "penalty" and has to complete the purchase of Twitter....probably at a significantly reduced price due to discovery, which will lead to Musk taking Twitter private and exposing the algorithm publicly and offering it up for crowdsourcing improvements a la Mozilla Firefox?
Oooooh, throw me in that briarpatch smartguy! (apologies for assuming gender. I know how much that upsets gadfly)
LOL
This is a legal, financial and business dead end for Twitter...and just wait until the shareholders find how much fraud has been knowingly committed by the Twitter leadership in falsely portraying their user base to advertisers across the globe!
But I have to admit, what I love most about gadfly's/readering's/Dumb Lefty Mark's hilarious commentary is gadfly retreating to the standard lefty line about how Musk is mostly govt funded!
Yeah, the guy and his company that single-handedly moved the US back into the global space launch lead serving the needs of NASA, NSA, DOD, etc and whose EV company is kicking the ever-lovin' s*** out of "car guy" (wink wink, like his "aviator" shades!) Joe Biden's failed Detroit losers who get MORE from the govt for their EV sales than Tesla, all the while staying on the leading edge of AI-driven robotics and about a dozen other fundamentally groundbreaking businesses.
And CA can say adios to the Tesla giga-factory in Fremont. That sucker is a dead-man walking now that Austin/Global Headquarters is up and running: https://www.tesla.com/giga-texas
So keep talking lefties...while Musk and his team of investors keep winning.
So...let's say Musk buys it and discovers/publicizes substantial cheating prior to his takeover. What, if any, legal jeopardy awaits top execs?
Good question. US Robotics hid inventory inside darkened h/t WaPo warehouses that colored sales and defrauded 3Com in a deal worth millions, and now Twitter is on the hook for claiming billions in people... persons' interest.
gadfly said...
You are way out of your league making dumb comments like these. Readering makes reasoned comments and you attack him with a "Hee-Haw-like" quote. Indeed, "if it weren't for bad luck, you'd have no luck at all."
Brilliant rejoinder. You really shouldn't call people stupid. Your posts here are juvenile and idiotic.
You are Inga level stupid.
Your populist view of the world is certainly not better than a progressive viewpoint from the conservative perch I sit on.
You are not a conservative.
You can say whatever you want. You stand on the same side as the censorious big corporate scum and the people who have 2 sets of rules.
"Musk can complete the purchase and make Twitter as transparent as he desires."
If it's bots all the way down, he's paying for nothing. That's the point. His offer was based on a perceived value of X number of real users. If the number of real users is only a fraction of X, it isn't worth what he offered. The offer was dependent on Twitter being able to show Musk how many real users they have. Musk says they haven't done that. Twitter says it has. Some lawyers are about to become very rich figuring out who is right.
Ah, Facebook. They have all kinds of fact checkers. Can't openly discuss the bad effects of the dreaded covid vaccine, or even say it has bad effects. Can't provide a direct link to alexberenson.substack.com- it gets blocked and you get a warning.
But what can't the fact checkers do? Ensure that Facebook advertisers run a legitimate business. Clicked on a Facebook ad yesterday for something I'd want. And then checked the site out with a google search. They take your money and there's <50% chance you'll get the product. Virtually every Facebook ad I've clicked on had done this. A few times when an ad made me aware of a product- I ended up buying it at Amazon, a real company- that doesn't advertise on Facebook.
All my Facebook friends are real people. I can click through the friend's list of some of my male friends- and they're friends with a lot of really gorgeous women. They're not real people (well, maybe pics of real people...), but they have a lot of friends. I suspect females fall for similar scams. Women taken for everything they've got by an unscrupulous man they've only just met seems to be a pretty common story.
"Comfortable, my ass! In the real world, Twitter is free to charge any ad fee it pleases, so this garbage about bots - Twitter bots, foreign bots and even the number of fake users changes nothing. Of all people, Musk must know this but perhaps what he doesn't understand, as primarily a seller to the US government, is that Twitter is consumer-driven."
Twitter's "consumers" are the advertisers. Their product is eyeballs. If it turns out they are selling less eyeballs than they claim, the advertisers are a lot less likely to pay "any ad fee it pleases". That makes the company worth a lot less than was first thought.
There's a grandfather somewhere saying to his grandkid, "I used to be a thing called 'a proof reader'. It was a job, at newspapers and such, back when people typed with their fingers instead of just their thumbs. You checked it twice, what was called 'the copy', before you... I was going to say hit SEND but there wasn't any SEND or ENTER. You walked it across the room. In those days, if you can believe this, the period would go inside, in front of the quotation marks. Well, unless the sentence ended with an ellipsis and then it would be the ellipsis and then the quotation marks and then another period."
Wait, is it me?
"Otter of his own fate"
I love that!
According to the purchase agreement, Twittter is not required to disclose any information to Musk that would, in its “reasonable judgment,” “cause significant competitive harm to the Company or its Subsidiaries if the transactions contemplated by this Agreement are not consummated”. That’s a pretty big out for Twitter. The $1B breakup fee may be the floor rather than the ceiling on what Musk may have to pay to get out of the deal.
“Your populist view of the world is certainly not better than a progressive viewpoint from the conservative perch I sit on.”
Whose lap are you dancing on, ‘fly?
’If it turns out they are selling less eyeballs than they claim, the advertisers are a lot less likely to pay "any ad fee it pleases". That makes the company worth a lot less than was first thought.’
Factual observations such as this trigger the lefties and will necessarily become misinformation. Your social credit score will be adjusted downward accordingly. Be better.
Readering said...
Musk can complete the purchase and make Twitter as transparent as he desires.
Yes, he can
And I wish he would
But neither you nor I are in charge of his money
Left Bank of the Charles said...
According to the purchase agreement, Twittter is not required to disclose any information to Musk that would, in its “reasonable judgment,” “cause significant competitive harm to the Company or its Subsidiaries if the transactions contemplated by this Agreement are not consummated”.
"Competitive harm" would be "if you told this to Truth Social it would hurt us."
Musk requested information that would let him establish that Twitter management wasn't lying.
Twitter management said they'd give him a feed so he could see it all for himself.
Then they crippled the feed so he COULDN'T see it for himself.
Which means either they've been lying about bots, or else they're trying to sabotage the agreement.
In either case they shouldn't get squat
gadfly said...
"Twitter calculates its estimate that unwanted bots make up less than 5 percent of what it terms monetizable average daily users, those which the company feels comfortable charging advertisers to reach."
Comfortable, my ass! In the real world, Twitter is free to charge any ad fee it pleases
Wow, it must be awesome to charge whatever you want, and know people will always pay it.
Back here in the real world, advertisers routinely ask for verification as to the size of the market they're reaching.
If Twitter has been lying about that, then a Republican AG can probably send a bunch of Twitter management to jail.
Richard Aubrey said...
So...let's say Musk buys it and discovers/publicizes substantial cheating prior to his takeover. What, if any, legal jeopardy awaits top execs?
Well, that depends on two things:
1: What false statements did they make in gov't filing documents?
2: Are the heads of the gov't the filed false information with their allies?
For example, Biden's AG MG isn't going to file any charges against left wing Twitter execs for defrauding "right wing" Musk.
So, does Musk take over, open up Twitter to real people, watch the GOP win in 2022 and 2024, and then have a GOP AG to go after the execs?
Or will the Biden* Admin give them all pardons?
Maybe Musk is going to use the "Otter defense" from Animal House?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ4-ajeeFzY
Wa St Blogger,
"I've said it often. Althouse needs to recruit better liberals."
What if she already has?
Twitter has sued Musk and his acquisition entities in Delaware Chancery Court. 1 count. Breach of contract seeking specific performance and injunctive relief to force closing. No damages, but complaint could always be amended. Also motion to expedite proceedings filed. Musk tweets feature prominently in the complaint.
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