I just can never trust anything he says because he has a significant history of being indecisive and disorderly. This deal is a perfect demonstration of how I feel. What I can't really tell is if he was always like that or grew into it at one point.
Also, the guy is always going to extreme lengths to seek attention, just like one certain US politician...Something turns me off from these types of people.
I remember listening to someone describe a conversation they had with him or where he was speaking, and he relayed that Elon was telling them that in his world he can't relate to people because to him its like everyone is a toddler mentally and he has to go down to their level....now, I just fully don't believe that, that sounds like the most contrived "I'm a genius peasants" story imaginable, something out of a movie.
He went from being wealthy growing up, to being very rich after Paypal, to being an extremely rich billionaire, to being the most richest person in the world (maybe ever?). And now a single utterance of his can shape markets or otherwise influence millions of people.
I think it would be difficult to go through the above and not come out the other end without it impacting your behaviors & world view. At a minimum, before he was this wealthy & influential he didn't have as much margin for error. A single bad decision might have tanked Tesla or SpaceX when they were getting started. It would have required Musk to be a lot more careful & deliberate. He also had to care a bit more (or at least pretend to care) about other people's thoughts/ideas etc. These days he can lose $1B in a twitter acquisition breakup fee and it barely matters. And he has enough "f*ck off" money (the amount required to tell someone to "f*ck off" with no significant consequences) to tell anyone to f*ck off. The need to adhere to social niceties is greatly reduced.
This is all on top of the fact that the average person's behavior is usually going to change at least a little as they get older.
All of which is to say that I think there's an excellent chance that he's grown into his current personality. If so, I think it's very possible that it's a mixture: He grew into where he is now, but the seeds were always there & his track in life has amplified or caused those seeds to take hold.
I can't believe that so many people still haven't figured him out (which is also true for the previous American and current Russian presidents, who have similarly repulsive personalities).
We want to believe in the cool, if a bit unhinged, hero-engineer that builds all the cool stuff we were promised in all the sci-fi movies as kids but failed to materialize, such as Mars colonies and self-driving cars. A lot of that failure is due to some things being a ton harder in reality than fiction, but a lot is also due to a managerialist, short-term culture that no longer seems to be thinking big and taking risks. Musk is the avatar for those who want these cool things and kicks back against the prevailing culture - a real-life counterpart to the billionaire genius in the Marvel movies.
The problem is, of course, that Tony Stark is a fictional character and Musk is not. Not only has he been drinking his own kool aid of late, but he's not much of a hero either, rather a spoiled bully who punches down.
The solution already exists and it's called "public transport".
I suspect this might be due to being surrounded by people who are too impressed by him to called out an idea when it's not sound.
Then the memes, then the crypto tokens, then it just got all weird so I stopped listening.
He divorced his wife, starts dating actresses and musicians, the latter turns him on to smoking pot and he thinks to himself, "Hey, I'm now a cool guy who smokes pot. I need to show people I'm a cool guy who smokes pot" and goes on Joe Rogan and shows off his new coolness. Same thing with his twitter antics.
The first time I heard him speak was watching clips from his solar roof announcements. He had the charisma and presentation skills of a 4th grader giving a book report.
Squaring his public behaviour with his presumed intelligence suggests that he's doing all this for some specific purpose. Either it's marketing to a certain contingent that he's interested in selling to. Perhaps it's brand building to help hiring or something else for one of his companies. His movie cameos, shitposts etc. all seem to be calculated to create a connection between him and a younger demographic. Or maybe, I'm over intellectualising and he's just drunk on his own image or power. Can't really say.
I don't particularly "like" the guy. But then again, I make it a point to try not to have an emotional opinion about any public figure. The default position is "ignore" and that's where I'm still at.
> I explain that needing someone so badly that you feel like nothing without them is textbook codependence. Musk disagrees. Strongly. “It’s not true,” he replies petulantly. “I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.” He hesitates, shakes his head, falters…
He’s been in desperate need of therapy for a long time. It’s sad in some ways. He is one of the most brilliant men alive, but he would be 10x happier and more effective if he worked on himself as hard as he works his companies.
[0] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-m...
There are other similarities - impulsiveness in business, Twitter obsession, strong COVID downplaying...
The one thing I respect though (and expect most people here won't) is that he appears to have the "nouveau riche" disrespect for the establishment, and doesn't feel he needs to kiss anyone's ass or play by the rules in a system that is already rigged for rich people. The fact that he has annoyed so many, especially elite/establishment figures, is a good thing. I'd much rather see him use his wealth to piss off the establishment than just to grow richer safely, which he could easily do. So maybe his annoying behavior is at least partially by design, and the fact that it bothers everyone is exactly what he wants, which I think deserves some respect.
The appearance of indecisiveness and disorderliness is because he's doings things nobody has done before. And that's how that sort of thing looks.
Its just a prank bro.
There's an obvious immaturity there too, wherein he responds to any criticism, hint that he may be wrong, or regulatory effort with the equivalent of a childish "you're just stupid!"
His battles with the SEC are a classic example, and it would be on-brand if this Twitter deal was as much about thumbing the eye of regulators as anything else. His announcement today had at one point caused a 20% dip in Twitter's pre-market price and 5% bump for Tesla's. The entire ride has been an exercise in manipulation.
So, I've wondered at times if a lot of this superiority act is really just deep insecurity, and he needs the world to constantly reassure him that he's as smart as he needs them to believe he is. When you look at the attention-seeking behavior you mentioned, it definitely aligns.
The deal at $54.20 was maybe OK for him a month ago (it was great for Twitter because nobody else was interested at that price). Since then, Twitter reported disappointing numbers for the past quarter, and the entire market took a nose dive, with tech hit especially hard.
TWTR stock price was in the mid-30s before Musk's offer. Without the offer, and with the disappointing numbers, and with the recent market development, one could reasonably assume that the stock would be below 30 today.
Musk should just pay the break fee of $1bn, and renegotiate for $42.69 or whatever meme number he fancies. Why pay $42bn total for something when you can get it for $30bn.
It was becoming obvious that to buy Twitter, TSLA value would have to decline severely. IIRC, Musk only got around to selling $8 Billion pretax before quitting.
Musk thought he could afford Twitter. He sells some TSLA and the market collapses, and he suddenly decides against it.
Everything else is smoke and mirrors. Musk doesn't have the cash for the deal anymore (maybe he never had the cash for the deal). I guess Musk is looking at the $1 Billion ejection clause now and trying to weasel around it.
But at this rate, it looks like Musk owes Twitter $1 billion cash for this broke deal.
That's not really how the break fee works. There's a specific performance clause that allows Twitter to force Musk to go through with the deal as long as he has the money (which, shockingly, seems to have come through). They'd only give up on that and take the break fee if the deal was truly over and they were prepared to say no to a lower offer.
It is not clear to me that the personal cost to Musk would be less than what he initially expected it to be, measured in units of Tesla stock, though I agree it could be less than if he completes the current deal.
As for the spammers thing, Musk waived an extensive due-diligence investigation, and now he is complaining about issues that should have been covered by that investigation.
Perhaps because the board and shareholders will be far more inclined to reject an offer from Musk after he feigned buying it one time and backed out?
1. Announce buyout (priced at a premium, of course) is "on hold"
2. Stock drops due to bad news
3. Re-negotiate for lower buyout after manipulating the stock to a lower price
Now that's premium starting from a lower base, but...
Also, it does feel a little "manipulation"-y to tank the price on news of you yourself trashing your deal, then taking advantage of that to make the same deal but cheaper?
Of course any analysis is assuming Elon actually means it and didn't just tweet this as a joke or on a whim.
I just assumed this is his plan here? He manipulates the market with his shenanigans and trash talking, lowers the price of Twitter by a massive amount, then buys it for a bargain.
This isn't a renegotiation, this is him paying points on his mortgage for a lower rate - but where the points paid go towards the previous owners either way.
A great way to spend a billion!
> As a result of these developments, we believe that if Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter disappeared tomorrow, Twitter’s equity would fall by 50% from current levels. Consequently, we see a significant risk that the deal gets repriced lower.
The board and execs consented to a takeover by an ideological adversary...the company culture is smashed and will never return
If he walks, the stock craters and employees know the board is no longer invested in the future...if the deal goes through, employees will have to March to Elon's beat or be fired. Either way...bye Twitter
He is asking for proof that spam and fake accounts are less than 5% of total users. He obviously believes the number is much higher[1]. This does not seem to be a deal killer - he is just calling their bluff[2]. Maybe they are right. Maybe not. We will see. Interesting times!
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1517215066550116354
[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-estimates-spam-fa...
Considering he said this was a big reason for his purchase, you'd think the world's smartest man would have had his team do this due diligence?
Instead, he mad an offer on a whim and put the deal together in a couple days. Brilliant.
What does he gain by calling their bluff?
His choices are: pay the original price, or pay the $1 billion cancellation fee. There might be a third choice: Twitter could offer to renegotiate, but they aren't obliged to. They could take the $1 billion instead.
It took me about 3 seconds to realize that after the stock market crashed, Elon wanted to get a better price. The 5% stuff is just a random excuse.
That reference - "If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!" - does not assert your claim.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-13/elon-m...
If you want more accuracy, hire some people from say Amazon's Mechanical Turk and do 1000. 10k.
That seems like a difficult thing to determine.
I'm sorry, but what a worthless thing to say. I can't stand it when pundits say this.
The Musk Twitter deal has a $1 billion termination fee [2] on both sides. Now it's unclear on what conditions would trigger this exactly. In Twitter's case, it at least includes accepting another offer. On Musk's end, it includes if financing falls through.
So here's the $1 billion question: what happens if (as Musk might argue) Twitter made material misrepresentations about their business, specifically to do with how many users they actually have? This might be an out for Musk or it might not.
Personally I've long thought there are a huge number of fake Twitter accounts and Twitter is actively disincentivized from ever finding out if that's true or not. Put another way: they like their big numbers for active accounts, DAU and MAU.
But if Twitter is found to be materially misrepresenting those numbers, they have way more serious problems than if the Musk deal falls through. They've then opened themselves up to litigation by the SEC and investors that they materially misled investors.
Things could actually get really ugly for Twitter here regardless of what happens with the Musk deal.
If you think about it, this could be a relatively cheap way of mortally wounding Twitter. Make a buyout offer, get access to the books, prove they're lying about DAU/MAU, walk away with no termination fee paid, watch the executive team get sued into oblivion and the company tanks.
[1]: https://money.cnn.com/2011/11/24/technology/att_t-mobile_bre...
[2]: https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/26/elon-musks-twitter-deal-in...
> If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!
April 21 900K likes
This led to the theory that Twitter might have way more fake accounts then it's leading us on to believe. There was some speculation that the "Less than 5% figure" would come to bite them in due diligence so they were panicking and dumping bot accounts. Now this...
I'm not saying these two events are related, but there does seem to be something fishy going on. My gut says it will come out in the next few days that Twitter has something like %10-15 of their accounts being bots rather than the initial "Less than 5%" figure.
Interesting idea, albeit very high risk, however what's the motivation? Say he's right, sure he walks away with $1B minus his legal fees. But if he looses, he own Twitter... but wanted to "mortally wound" it.
Not sure he needs to do something high risk like this for the potential of $1B, and based on how much he uses Twitter I'm not sure he wants to take it down.
Well, yeah, this goes for every single public company (including Tesla).
That's true, but what does Elon gain from destroying Twitter?
I'd argue that Twitter actually was (and still is) a big part in building his cult of personality. Sure, it has its problems, but I honestly believe that he thinks he can improve Twitter.
What a massively fucked world we live in.
Conspiracies and jokes aside, how one determines(at contractually acceptable certainty) what accounts are absolutely fake or bot account? It's not like they ticked the checkbox saying "I am a fake account".
If the sellers and buyers are not on the same page here, wouldn't that drag in court for years maybe?
After all, maybe Musk will actually burn a billion only to buy Twitter later at a half price or less and save $20B+. Twitter might end to be much more cheaper after a stock crash due to the bearish markets and that fake users scandal(?) that Musk exposed(?).
Right now, Twitter's ability to ferret out fake accounts is just completely ineffective. In the communities I follow, I see literally hundreds of reply posts under each tweet of certain people, all with the same profile picture as the OP, all tweeting about giveaways.
Twitter should be focussed on cleaning up their product, and one of the variables required for that is knowing what amount of users are being used to spam scam messages. The fact that they can't means twitter's development isn't prioritising it. A ballpark estimate of the order of magnitude of that figure should be possible for them if they were in any way actively trying to solve the problem, which they are obviously not doing.
Take a randomly selected group of 10,000 active users, show them a captcha, and look at the percentage of respondents.
1) Pay $1B fine to Twitter
2) Buy cheaper
3) Get a $1B chairman first year bonus from Twitter
He'll probably find a way to write it off on taxes as well
For user in Twitter:
Confirmation = random(number)
Send user message(“if you are not a bot reply with”, confirmation)
Obviously the bots on twitter account for more than 5%, and will be at the detriment of the biggest KPI that twitter touts. He's given them a taste of what will happen if they walk away from the deal by 'putting it on hold' and watching the stock lose 10% in precisely the same day as a general market recovery.
He now has the ability to renegotiate below his 'best and final offer'.
What if he dedicated this energy to reducing homelessness or slowing climate change? Showing up a tech company for having a lot of fake accounts seems more like a dick measuring contest than a fine moment for anyone.
This is a fantasy because that's not how any of this works. He can't put the deal on hold, the number of bots on twitter doesn't give him an out, regardless of wether it's five percent or 35 percent — in short, he doesn't have a position of leverage if twitter wants to pursue it legally. Read Matt Levine's latest columns for a complete and thorough breakdown.
This whole debacle is not some kind of '5D chess' move from Musk, it's just the inevitable outcome of a fickle, ego-driven billionaire throwing his money around, and possibly (deservedly!) losing a huge amount of his fortune.
https://twitter.com/HindenburgRes/status/1523677782211186690
Musk tried to use all his 90M followers weight and his snark belitteling them into closing the short :
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1523693971842957312
Good on them for not listening to the noise and making bank.
In many years of watching sports, politics, business, culture I have seldom seen a more distasteful character than mr. Musk.
Back in my ignorant days I couldn't stand shortsellers, I considered them to be haters.
Oh so little did I know. They are the custodian of market sanity and also the saviors of the American consumer, they keep in check these megalomaniacal cult figures such as Musk, Holmes, Bernie Madoff, Adam Neumann who enrich themselves by inflating financial bubbles of epic proportions while providing little to no quality of life to the consumer
It's important to remember though, if Musk walks away and then comes back with another offer it's going to be extremely hard to convince of a new deal, since Musk no longer has any credibility.
The other thing to consider is that no one else wanted to buy Twitter for $45Bn. But let's say Musk walks away and Twitter drops back to where it should be at around $25 per share. Now you could easily see someone coming in and picking it up for $35-40 per share.
Also probably difficult for Musk to go in at a lower price if the deal falls apart. Best and most likely only route forward for twitter ownership by Musk is probably board agreeing to a lower price but prices are sticky in peoples mind so might be tough times ahead.
Or at least that’s my theory. What was yours?
That's a good question. Anyone have a good answer?
1. Sample x twitter accounts
2. Have humans review the accounts manually to determine if they are bots. This isn't perfect but can be good enough.
3. Extrapolate.
You'll come up with a reasonable percentage with this method to share with shareholders, but you can't use this method at scale to actually fix the issue.
Bend over, Elon. Pony up the gigabuck and go home.
I'll say that makes him look like an amateur ..
66% across expirations
People were betting
https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-sells-billions-of-dol...
I've been sorta a musk fan because he was willing to risk everything to pull off things that no one else was willing to take a risk on. OTOH, its patently obvious that he isn't some kind of genius, more like a gambler who managed a winning streak and somehow thinks its because they have a lucky charm. Maybe his biggest strength is that he is such a fine bullshitter he can detect it in others a mile away.
John Carmack: "Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so."
Here's Kevin Watson, who developed the avionics for Falcon 9 and Dragon and previously managed the Advanced Computer Systems and Technologies Group within the Autonomous Systems Division at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory:
"Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction.
He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy.
He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years."
Garrett Reisman, engineer and former NASA astronaut:
"What's really remarkable to me is the breadth of his knowledge. I mean I've met a lot of super super smart people but they're usually super super smart on one thing and he's able to have conversations with our top engineers about the software, and the most arcane aspects of that and then he'll turn to our manufacturing engineers and have discussions about some really esoteric welding process for some crazy alloy and he'll just go back and forth and his ability to do that across the different technologies that go into rockets cars and everything else he does."
Bullshitters who succeed have a strong tendency to start smelling their own farts and drinking their own koolaid
> NEW FROM US: We Are Short Twitter
> Musk Holds All The Cards. We See a Significant Risk That The Twitter Deal Gets Repriced Lower
Space Karen's reply:
> Interesting. Don’t forget to look on the bright side of life sometimes!
https://twitter.com/HindenburgRes/status/1523677782211186690
Musk refers to an article which claims that false or spam accounts represent fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.
In his Tweet, he suddenly wants to know whether spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.
Aren't these concepts (percentage of users and percentage of monetizable daily active users) something totally different?
I'm a lurker on Twitter. I follow people but don't tweet. Do I count as a user? My behavior is probably difficult to discern from a bot (using a third party app).
The bots everyone is concerned about are the ones tweeting, but there are probably all kinds of "legitimate" bots, like the ones that tweet when Apple pushes a software update, or something goes on sale on Steam.
That 5% number may be describing the "legitimate" bots, while what everyone cares about is the illegitimate ones.
>Twitter Inc(TWTR.N)estimated in a filing on Monday that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.
>The social media company had 229 million users who were served advertising in the first quarter. read more > Still committed to acquisition> As I have said before:
"Uniquely among public-company CEOs, Elon Musk has in the past pretended he was going to take a public company private with pretend financing! I am not saying that he’s joking now; I am just saying he’s the only person who has ever made this particular joke in the past."
> Perhaps he has decided that the joke would be even funnier if he signed a merger agreement, lined up billions of dollars of financing from banks and equity partners, committed to a $1 billion breakup fee and a specific-performance right in the merger agreement, got through antitrust review and a shareholder vote, showed up at the closing and said “nope, just kidding!” I mean, that would be very funny.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-11/terra-...
It's a great tragedy that his column is off today. Cannot wait to see what he has to say on Monday
> Much of the negotiation in a merger agreement is over what might go wrong: How could the deal fall through, and what would happen if it does? We talked about the main issues yesterday, and let’s go through them again.
> 1. Can Musk just change his mind? The short answer is no. If Musk changes his mind without a good reason, Twitter can force him to close the deal, as long as his debt financing is available. That is, if all of the conditions to closing are satisfied, and if Musk’s banks are willing to fund the $13 billion of Twitter debt and $12.5 billion of Tesla margin loans that they’ve promised, then Twitter can force Musk to put up the $21 billion of cash that he has promised and close the deal. (Section 9.9(b).) Short of that, though — short of actually forcing Musk to close the deal, which is tricky — Musk’s liability is limited to a reverse termination fee of $1 billion.[7] This is exactly what I laid out yesterday, except that I assumed the reverse termination fee would be $1,420,690,000, because Elon Musk loves meme numbers and Twitter seems willing to play along. The $1 billion breakup fee, while pretty standard for a deal of this size, is bizarre for an Elon Musk deal. Not a 420 in sight! (420 is a weed joke.)
> 2. What if Twitter’s business breaks? Musk does not have to close the deal if there has been a “material adverse effect” at Twitter. (Sections 4.9 and 7.2(b).) “Material adverse effect” is defined on page 5 of the agreement and it is long. Actually the definition doesn’t say much; it just says, tautologically, that a “Material Adverse Effect” is “any change, event, effect or circumstance which, individually or in the aggregate, has resulted in or would reasonably be expected to result in a material adverse effect on the business, financial condition or results of operations” of Twitter. All the action is in the exceptions to the MAE. As I suggested yesterday, there are lots of them, and it is somewhat difficult to think of an event that would cause a material adverse effect on Twitter’s business but not be covered by an exception to the MAE. If Twitter does badly due to all sorts of general conditions (changes in law, general economic and financial conditions, pandemics, etc.), that does not count as an MAE. If Twitter fails “to meet internal, analysts’ or other earnings estimates or financial projections or forecasts for any period,” that doesn’t count as an MAE; just having bad earnings isn’t enough. And, as usual, bad effects that result from “the negotiation, execution, announcement, performance, consummation or existence of this Agreement or the transactions contemplated by this Agreement” do not count as an MAE, though here they felt it necessary to spell out “including (A) by reason of the identity of Elon Musk, Parent or any of their Affiliates or their respective financing sources, or any communication by Parent or any of its Affiliates or their respective financing sources, including regarding their plans or intentions with respect to the conduct of the business of the Company.” If Elon Musk breaks Twitter by tweeting his plans for it, he still has to buy it.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-04-27/bill-h...
Talk about the opposite sketches!
If this was anyone else we wouldn't bat an eyelid.
This entire comment section is frothing with hate, and not much objectivity.
The number of spam/fake accounts depends highly on the accuracy of your classifier. Twitter's classifier could just be: "This account is not fake" and there's nothing Elon could say. He can't even sue because for all intents and purposes Twitter is not lying, the classifier is just wrong.
This could be a setup to give him an reason to cause a breakup of the deal (he can't just walk away!) but there are real money consequences.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-02/twitte...
If you're the sort of person who wants to believe in the power of markets, then you need to make sure that every participant has actual skin in the game, which means stopping people from accumulating so much wealth that they render the market permanently irrational, and the irony is that fomenting runaway wealth inequality is a natural tendency of markets.
The deal break clause should have been this...
Oh the difference a missing space makes.
He knows what he's doing.
I mean look at Bezos, he got into a fight with Trump, and the pentagon preferred Azure to AWS, all of a sudden. Yeah, and a year later that deal got cancelled too, by the next administration [1]. I mean Musk has a lot of business with Uncle Sam, he really can't play his own game, in terms of politics.
I mean, i mean, they really have a lot of 'leverage' with Musk, to begin with. I would guess that Musk would be looking for a way out of the twitter deal, in order to protect his business. Also the economy is going into a recession, therefore his deals with the various governments are going to be much more important. Look, there is even talk of Musk building an e-tank with a German firm, Rheinmetall [2]
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/pentagon-terminates-controvers...
China is the second biggest market after the US for Tesla sales—meaning CCP wields the power to decimate Musk’s wealth, which Tesla stock is the main source of. Musk knows Tesla’s position in China is fragile (like that of any Western company), and the Chinese government knows he knows that; it seems unlikely they will pass on newly found leverage when it comes to influencing discourse on Western social media.
By owning Twitter, Musk risks having to choose between his image as free speech maximalist and a large part of Tesla’s sales. From the outside, he doesn’t strike me as someone willing to sacrifice either. (He could implement some mechanism that gives CCP direct or indirect influence over Twitter without the public finding out, but that seems a bit far-fetched.)
So far there seems to be no mainstream Western social platform that stands to lose anything by ignoring CCP’s censors. We don’t see YouTube videos, Facebook posts or tweets taken down due to requests from Chinese government. Revenue from China is not a factor for any of their mother companies. I think that’s a good status quo to maintain.
MAU has a large impact on valuation, all of these platforms are filled with spam bots, and they are allowed to flourish because it pumps up those numbers. The platforms content suffers (Instagram comments anyone?), but they reach higher valuations because of these nonsense MAU numbers. They are all guilty of fraud. It's well within their ability to combat bots, but they have zero motivation to do so.
Eager to see what comes out of this.
In short, it's not about money, not about new information (% spam accounts), not about cold feet, it's about what he thinks would be seen as an embarrassingly bad business decision.
Is it too high and it’s not worth what they say?
Or is it too low and there’s not much room for improvement through better tools to remove them?
Are they counting my +1 accounts as fake? they're not, they each represent a different side of myself that's real, even if they don't bear my name. one for a site I created, one for a particular community I participate in, etc...
Tis is a way for Elon to back out by saving face since he did not notify Twitter upon the 9% threshold which would oopne himself to lawsuits from investors.
A lot of people get pretty riled up over his tweets it seems. If it brings you joy then follow it. If it messes with your mind, then maybe just unfollow it. He's rich, mercurial, sarcastic, and a lot of other things, but ultimately you can just disconnect from it and go about your life.
That's an unfortunate bot error from Reuters. For a moment I thought I was mistaken about what "Inc." should expand to.
> Perhaps he has decided that the joke would be even funnier if he signed a merger agreement, lined up billions of dollars of financing from banks and equity partners, committed to a $1 billion breakup fee and a specific-performance right in the merger agreement, got through antitrust review and a shareholder vote, showed up at the closing and said “nope, just kidding!” I mean, that would be very funny.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-11/terra-...
This is just a way of getting out of the deal and/or negotiating a better price; in particular now that general market valuations have changed.
How hard is it to reliably spot fake accounts across millions of users for SEC-level reporting fidelity?
It’s not clear to me why the calculation over bots and spam would threaten the deal.
This makes it pretty hard (in case of a popular tweet like this one impossible) to find the more important replies.
If Twitter lied about spambot counts that violates the deal.
None of this is to say the deal will go through; Musk can just ignore the law, as is his wont.
Is this what the future of executive and political leadership looks like? The bull in the china shop?
Both personalities will be graduate level studies of sociology and phycology for years to come. And the crazy thing is that this stuff resonates so well with so many people (read: the cult of Trump and Elon)
If I was to ever make a deal involving Elon Musk the first thing I’d make sure is to have paragraphs making it clear that Elon doesn’t open his mouth about it until the deal is either completed or cancelled.
I guess we'll find out more at 6/9
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252512620/British-court-...
https://www.cio.com/article/304397/the-hp-autonomy-lawsuit-t...
In best case scenario might end up like this with Twitter CEO (which one) facing securities fraud charges.
Also I think it is a lot more than %5. Also, again, I think it is still OK only if the half percent of the users represent the real (not-spam) users. The spam users are increasing and becoming much harder to determine when the user base grows. Even if you're running a simple blog and you notice lots of spams in your comments when you get some traffic. %5 is just not a realistic value.
Also lets not forget about "the paid" users. There is such a thing behind the scenes and they are not spam/fake.
The only questionable thing here is that Musk either does not grasp (or care) how influential his tweets are. He's tweeting as if he's just a random person with an opinion, but in reality his tweets tank stocks, pump (or dump) crypto, and activates a lot of harassment towards anybody he criticizes. With this in mind, the question about bots should have been asked behind closed doors.
Usually, I don't at all have the impression that there's some evil master plan behind it, they are spontaneous clumsy tweets based on whatever is bothering him.
Which in this case are bots that make Twitter unusable for him, or anybody else with a large following. Twitter very much deserves scrutiny and heavy criticism as it comes to bots. Look at Musk's tweets, within seconds there's hundreds of bots replying all with the same avatar and a slight misspelling of a user they're trying to mimic.
It's a stunningly primitive pattern, and yet still Twitter is entirely incompetent or lax to address it. For years. These bot replies come in from their API and work based on accounts or simple keywords.
Don't try this on somebody else's tweet, but you can test this yourself. Type "I need help with my metamask password". The moment you hit send, the notifications come rolling in.
Setting aside Musk's intentions with Twitter, I am fully in favor of the wake-up call. The bot problem. A mysterious verification protocol. Weird boosts and declines in followers. Unclear censorship and shadow banning protocols. Twitter has some explaining to do.
Jesus exposed the underlying collective violence, the scapegoat mechanism, that holds society together. Exposing the hidden mechanism weakens it, its psychological efficacy. And so of course the powers that be reacted, trying to silence Jesus and suppress his movement. But in doing so they only proved Jesus’s point, turning him into the ultimate example of the scapegoat and ensuring his message would echo through the ages.
In the Information age, Musk is exposing the informational violence, censorship and propaganda, that power relies upon. And so of course the powers that be conspire to thwart his takeover attempt of the world’s most important social network, pulling the levers of law and regulation and politics to stop this simple business transaction, while running defamatory stories about him in the press. But in doing so they only reveal the true extent of their lies and deceit, ensuring Musk’s message reverberates through the public consciousness. The moment of revelation is inescapable.