Elon Musk Amends Twitter Suit to Claim Fraud After Whistleblower's Allegations (nbcnews.com) 145
Reuters reports:
Billionaire Elon Musk accused Twitter of fraud by concealing serious flaws in the social media company's data security, which the entrepreneur said should allow him to end his $44 billion deal for the company, according to a Thursday court filing. Musk, the world's richest person, amended his previously filed lawsuit by adopting allegations by a Twitter whistleblower, who told Congress on Tuesday of meddling on the influential social media platform by foreign agents.
The chief executive of electric vehicle maker Tesla also alleged that Twitter hid from him that it was not complying with a 2011 agreement with the Federal Trade Commission regarding user data.
"Needless to say, the newest revelations make undeniably clear that the Musk Parties have the full right to walk away from the Merger Agreement — for numerous independently sufficient reasons," said the amended countersuit.
Twitter's lawyers countered that the whistleblower claims weren't sufficient grounds for terminating the deal, according to the article. And they added that the whistleblower was in fact fired for poor performance, and that while they've investigated the whistleblower's allegations internally they were found to have no merit.
They also disagree with Musk's characterization of the allegations as proving "fraud" and "breach of contract."
The chief executive of electric vehicle maker Tesla also alleged that Twitter hid from him that it was not complying with a 2011 agreement with the Federal Trade Commission regarding user data.
"Needless to say, the newest revelations make undeniably clear that the Musk Parties have the full right to walk away from the Merger Agreement — for numerous independently sufficient reasons," said the amended countersuit.
Twitter's lawyers countered that the whistleblower claims weren't sufficient grounds for terminating the deal, according to the article. And they added that the whistleblower was in fact fired for poor performance, and that while they've investigated the whistleblower's allegations internally they were found to have no merit.
They also disagree with Musk's characterization of the allegations as proving "fraud" and "breach of contract."
A very valid concern... (Score:3, Insightful)
To bring up before you sign your name to a contract where you commit that you will purchase even if these things are true.
Stop trying to back out and just embrace the fact that you have the chance to "clean up" Twitter, right? The bots, the security issues, the censorship, are they problems or not? Not buying Twitter isn't going to make a difference.
The court is absolutely going to force this deal, especially in Chancery and Delaware where the precedent and importance of contract law runs deep.
My theory is Musk is freaked not because of what might be happening at Twitter or that the deal is bad (but it is), but that if he ends up having to pay the money and take over Twitter he will have to stop being CEO at Tesla, the only one of his companies that is publically traded.
Re: A very valid concern... (Score:2, Troll)
How hard is it to store 150 characters in a database and spit them back to someone when they load the page? Twitter is still like a college level project, with lots and lots of duct tape holding it together.
Re: A very valid concern... (Score:5, Insightful)
If that was the case though Mastodon would have at least tens or hundreds of millions of users, it does the same thing right?
In reality social media is driven by audience capture and momentum. It's value is in the fact that it built a large and active userbase, it's code is of minor value in comparison.
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In reality social media is driven by audience capture and momentum.
AKA: The Network Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Classic arbitrage (Score:3, Insightful)
I like your analysis. He sees the site as mismanaged, in part because it has hidden how bad its actual numbers are. Now that he has forced them to release the numbers, the value will fall, and he will get it at a lower price, which will allow him to add value as he manages this service more competently. The big secret is that everyone benefits from a better Twitter or even, if we get lucky, a freer one. An absence of viewpoint discrimination makes any service not just more appealing and less terrifying, but
Re: Network effects (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, under what legal theory do you think the judge can just give Musk a discount on Twitter? The parties in a lawsuit can enter into a settlement but, if the government does it, it's called a "taking". Basically it's government simply taking private property away from someone either for itself or to hand over to third parties. That does happen, but it's usually initiated by a municipality, not a judge, and it requires that fair market value be paid (not that it always is, of course). Judges can fine parties for damages, etc. but that's not really the same thing. Plus it would be out of the blue since Musk is not suing for damages. Honestly, your notion of how this is going to go seems to be right out of fantasyland.
That's not to say that the Judge can't decide that Musk can back out of the contract, allowing the parties to negotiate a new price. That's not the same thing as the judge giving Musk a discount though.
Anyway, this whole thing was stupid from the start. Musk was almost certainly high when he decided on this deal. He's certainly not capable of 'fixing' Twitter in any meaningful way. This is not Musk negotiating with unreasonable people. Musk is the unreasonable person in this case. He jumped into a deal without doing proper due diligence. Once again, probably because he was high.
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The hard part (technically speaking) of Twitter is the scale, specifically of two of their queries. Yes, you can write a query like "SELECT * from tweets WHERE user=follower UNIQ." That will work when you have 10,000 users but scaling it is much, much harder.
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It's not a trivial problem, but it's hardly an unsolved one. Distributed computing was hardly invented by Twitter.
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It's not a problem you're going to solve by merely throwing more hardware at.
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No, of course not. You have to actually design to run on that hardware. Of course, something to consider is that even a single regular db running on on non-distributed hardware can query literally billions of rows of records in reasonable time (obviously you can't run all the queries required for Twitter on one machine, but you can run any individual query in reasonable time). The basic techniques for doing this are covered in any data structure or database course. They certainly were when I took those cour
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If you think "put an index on the table" and the problem is solved, then you haven't thought about the problem very deeply.
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If you think "put an index on the table" and the problem is solved, then you haven't thought about the problem very deeply.
You're mischaracterizing what I'm saying. Since what I'm saying is that the appropriate techniques are already understood in the field of databases, you're essentially mischaracterizing the whole field as "put an index on the table". What I am saying, specifically, is that the database challenges that Twitter faced, while not trivial, were also already solved problems.
Let's stop talking in generalities though and get specific. Twitter specifically used a mysql cluster. The techniques used to cluster mysql a
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You can agree or disagree on whether it's like a college level project (it's clearly larger in scale, for example).
It's not a college level project.
Let's stop talking in generalities though and get specific. Twitter specifically used a mysql cluster.
Mysql is part of it. If you try to run Twitter on mysql alone, it will fall flat on its face. If you try to run twitter with a query like the one I gave earlier, the database will die quickly (mainly because of the simplification of "where user=follower" which is a simplification). If you can find a "standard solution" to writing this type of query in any textbook, I'd be surprised. Is it impossible? No. Is it a cool trick? Yes.
The next technical challenge is caching. Twitte
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It's not a college level project.
Is it more sophisticated than, for example, Facebook? That literally was a university project.
Mysql is part of it. If you try to run Twitter on mysql alone, it will fall flat on its face. If you try to run twitter with a query like the one I gave earlier, the database will die quickly (mainly because of the simplification of "where user=follower" which is a simplification). If you can find a "standard solution" to writing this type of query in any textbook, I'd be surprised. Is it impossible? No. Is it a cool trick? Yes.
I'm a little confused by why you think that you providing a bad example of a query initially somehow proves your point. The "standard solution" for that kind of query is called a select query. It follows the general form:
SELECT FROM [database] where
Which database and what criteria depends on how the db is actually structured. Are lots of things to do with databases cool tricks? Yes. Did Twitter invent those cool t
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Basically, you have not described anything more impressive than a big e-mail server.
OK, when you're done trolling come back.
I'm a little confused by why you think that you providing a bad example of a query initially somehow proves your point.
Yes, you are confused.
Re:A very valid concern... (Score:4, Insightful)
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One might even credit him with doing all this shit to put them on the hook for their scams finally.
Re: A very valid concern... (Score:2)
I really don't think Elon is going to read your post dude.
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I really don't think Elon is going to read your post dude.
I wouldn't be surprised if he did, especially as it stands out as the first post in the thread. Musk admits that he spends a great deal of time playing around on the internet (rather than working as he also claims), and I can think of certain regular forum posters here who could well be Musk under a pseudonym.
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Re:A very valid concern... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because he opened his mouth before thinking.
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By him "Opening his mouth" it's provided a net-benefit to the twitter userbase at large as well as the advertisers. I would go as far as to say it's provided a societal benefit. This is what he has exposed.
* User data is not well protected. This data can include things like Geolocation data (this was brought up in the hearings)
* Bots are being used to sway public opinion. We've all seen the screenshots of 40 twitter accounts saying the same thing word for word.
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PLENTY OF PEOPLE passed on buying Twitter after only a few seconds of looking at it.
MUSK is a MORON who deserves his fat foot in mouth disease created problem.
Re: A very valid concern... (Score:2)
You're a moron dude. Even if something is sold as-is, if the seller knows there's something wrong with it and doesn't disclose that, then the buyer can either reverse the transaction or get reimbursed based on the difference of what they paid vs what it is now worth.
That is to say, even if Musk said "I'll buy it right now, as-is, for $44 billion" he would be reasonable to assume any or both of two things:
1) Their statements to shareholders in their 10ks and 10qs are accurate
2) There aren't any problems with
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This isn't a house purchase, it's a corporate merger agreement, which has it's own rules.
It seems that for Musk to get out of the purchase his lawyers have to either prove "material adverse effect" (that the business is *significantly* worse than represented), or intentional fraud. Just proving that bot accounts are higher than they said they believed doesn't necessarily meet either of these conditions.
Note that the bar to prove MAE appears pretty high. It's not a matter of misrepresentation, but *material*
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This isn't a house purchase, it's a corporate merger agreement, which has it's own rules.
Yes, every transaction is inevitably going to be different. Nonetheless, you can't sell something as-is when you know there is a material defect that you have not disclosed to the buyer. It doesn't matter whether it's a house, a car, a business, etc. Financial statements and disclosures have to be fair and reasonable. Twitter significantly overselling its ad business would be concerning not only to the shareholders, but also the advertisers. That would be a material defect.
Note that the bar to prove MAE appears pretty high. It's not a matter of misrepresentation, but *material* misrepresentation.
Exactly. My point was that the par
Re: A very valid concern... (Score:2)
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When you buy a house you hire your own inspector to check out the foundation, wiring, etc. as part of the process. When the housing market was at its hottest people were waiving inspections in order to buy ASAP, and were indeed getting
Re: A very valid concern... (Score:2)
When it comes to businesses, think of financial statements as being the same thing as an inspector's report in this case. On financial statements, especially for public companies, you are required to be honest about what you've found. That doesn't guarantee there are no problems. However, if the business owner(s) are aware of them, they're required to disclose them in those financial statements.
So if an inspector didn't find out that there was a meth lab there, that's fine, but if the owner is aware of it,
Only moron here is you.... (Score:2)
You're a moron dude. Even if something is sold as-is, if the seller knows there's something wrong with it and doesn't disclose that, then the buyer can either reverse the transaction or get reimbursed based on the difference of what they paid vs what it is now worth.
Thinking that buying a ** billion dollar company... is like buying your po' dunk 120k house. lol.
Re: Only moron here is you.... (Score:2)
That's called an analogy. Unlike you, and most of slashdot apparently, I actually understand a fair bit of accounting and the rules around how public companies are supposed to make disclosures in their financial statements. If what the whistleblower is saying is true, then Twitter is in danger of being sued by its shareholders, and their management could be looking at criminal penalties, regardless of Elon being involved. This wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened during a merger, buyo
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You are 100% right, and all of that could have been likely uncovered in a lengthy due diligence process before signing an official aquisition agreement.
Since that was all waived, in a contract that Musk's team wrote and approved and that he signed, it likely doesn't really matter now.
Even at the time the deal was announced it was pretty much agreed by anyone looking at it that Musk was overpaying but he did so to put the Twitter shareholders in a corner, "this deal is too good to turn down", and it worked!
L
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Ya I totally agree. Hoping SpaceX starts doing the belter thing for rare minerals.
Re: A very valid concern... (Score:2)
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No. Musk is a con man He wants you to believe all this stuff, but like all the other billionaires, he just wants more money.
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You keep saying he waived all rights. This is a patent falsehood. He waived most rights, but not all. An infestation of known foreign intelligence agents that upper management did nothing about is very much covered under the rights he did not waive.
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> Even at the time the deal was announced it was pretty much agreed by anyone looking at it that Musk was overpaying
It seemed more like a joke. Maybe it *was* meant to be a joke.
The oddly specific $54.20 offer price was as "420" cannabis-culture joke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:A very valid concern... (Score:5, Insightful)
To think that Musk signing a contract with a price of his choosing, with terms of his choosing written by lawyers of his choosing is a victim of fraud in this case is in my opinion an unreasonable position.
Musk essentially signed to buy "as-is" and specifically waived the rights to look at all these details.
I'm not defending Twitter here but it was just a bad deal and the court is likely going to enforce the contract as signed.
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Most likely the court will tell them to come to a walk away position. Meaning Elon pays X$40m for having this aired out in public. They won't come to that and then the court will decide what X is. If there is already a walk away clause in the Agreement, and it looks remotely fare, the court will go with that. My guess is that Elon doesn't like the walk-away-clause.
But in the end, everyone moves on. Its rare that a Count will force someone into an action they brought the court in to resolve when they se
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Actually it's pretty rare that a court, especially Delaware, and especially Chaucery which are very, very business friendly areas and courts (which is why so many deals are done there and businesses are incorporated there) to essentially void a contract.
What I have seen is in it's entire history of the Chaucery court they have done what Musk is asking them to do exactly once and it was very diferent circumstances. The court has every incentive and precedent to enforce that contract as signed because it pu
Fraud is special (Score:2, Informative)
To think that Musk signing a contract with a price of his choosing, with terms of his choosing written by lawyers of his choosing is a victim of fraud in this case is in my opinion an unreasonable position.
Musk essentially signed to buy "as-is" and specifically waived the rights to look at all these details.
Fraud has a special place [akin-law.com] in the legal system, it allows you to essentially get out of an agreement.
Could it be any other way? It's the rule that actually prevents fraud in the vast majority of circumstances.
From the previous link:
Fraud is a defense to enforcement of the contract. You must demonstrate more than a misunderstanding or a failure to read the contract before you sign it. To void a contract, you must show the misrepresentation was intentional and fraudulent.
If Musk can show that Twitter lied on the SEC filings, that's sufficient evidence of fraud to allow Musk to cancel the deal. There's probably some wiggle room about the number of bots - say, 10% versus the reported 5%, but if the number is substantially higher, then twitter would
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There's probably some wiggle room about the number of bots - say, 10% versus the reported 5%, but if the number is substantially higher, then twitter would have been clearly defrauding its advertizers.
It seems like no matter how many times people correct the record someone always brings it back up again. Twitter has never claimed 5% of tweets or users are bots. Trying to use the number of bots to prove fraud may rile up Musk fans, but it will do nothing in court.
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Fraud is a defense to enforcement of the contract. You must demonstrate more than a misunderstanding or a failure to read the contract before you sign it. To void a contract, you must show the misrepresentation was intentional and fraudulent.
If Musk can show that Twitter lied on the SEC filings, that's sufficient evidence of fraud to allow Musk to cancel the deal. There's probably some wiggle room about the number of bots - say, 10% versus the reported 5%, but if the number is substantially higher, then twitter would have been clearly defrauding its advertizers.
The whistleblower claims don't seem to be relevant here, but it's yet another aspect of the discovery process that twitter has to deal with. If there's a hint of relevance to the case, Musk can then ask for discovery that will air even more of twitter's dirty laundry.
First, Musk needs to show that Twitter's numbers are not only wrong, but a deliberate lie.
Second... I suspect Musk needs to show he actually believed the lie before hand, which is difficult when his statement on purchasing included two references to fixing the bot problem [twitter.com]. To put it another way, if you publicly stated that you didn't believe a claim in the contract before signing you can't then circle back and try to get out because that claim was a misrepresentation.
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There's probably some wiggle room about the number of bots - say, 10% versus the reported 5%, but if the number is substantially higher, then twitter would have been clearly defrauding its advertizers.
Flatly and irreparably wrong.
It could 100% wrong, and that doesn't matter, as long as the filing is not fraudulent. To prove fraud, you must prove intent.
Being wrong is not a crime.
You could argue, "but they didn't WANT to know the real answer..."
And that still wouldn't matter.
That's between Twitter and its shareholders. Twitter's board does have an obligation of fiduciary duty to them, i.e., to do a good job., but they have no such obligation to anyone who offers them money in return for ownership of
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Musk essentially signed to buy "as-is" and specifically waived the rights to look at all these details.
I honestly googled for a source for that. I don't think the contract is public is it?
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It is 100% public record which is why there are so many lawyers and other people commenting about it, including Matt Levine who i referenced earlier.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/e... [sec.gov]
Does Elon Musk Know How Mergers Work? [bloomberg.com]
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That was his decision to make though, there was no "stonewalling", Twitter has released everything a public company has to release to the SEC and their shareholders. If Musk had gone through a more formal merger which would have taken much much longer this would likely be a non0issue as he would have had lot of outs and this whole thing owuld be over. But he didn't, he signed an agreement to buy Twitter at $54.20 a share and Twitter shareholders agreed to it.
Does Elon Musk know how mergers work? [bloomberg.com]
“Yo
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In response to a SEC question about why Twitter only gives its DAU percentage and not the actual number, the company explained that it thinks "the absolute number of DAUs is less important than the percentage change in DAUs because the key factor is whether engagement is increasing or decreasing on a relative basis."
This was in 2017, obviously that answer was satisfactory to the SEC.
So is your claim that this was a master ploy for Musk to "expose" Twitter, because signing a merger agreement at $54.20 a shar
Re:A very valid concern... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would he pay $44bn for something only worth $2bn, with $8bn in potential lawsuits? So he can be $50bn in the hole? It makes no sense.
Because he signed a contract to do so. Musk needs to stop thinking he is above the law.
Musk is above the law (Score:5, Insightful)
It always strikes me as odd that anyone things the truly wealthy aren't just Kings and Queens, and that the law applies to them. You'd think Epstein would have shown us that when nobody asked Ghislaine Maxwell about who she trafficked those kids to. Or that we did fuck all about the Panama Papers. Or that billionaire confined to his palatial estate because he got caught banging under aged prostitutes (I forget the name of which one I've got in mind right now, there's two or three of them).
These are our ruling class. You have a ruling class. It's weird that you pretend that you don't.
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What are you talking about? That happens all the time. I have a friend that got a 100Mbps connection to download from another friend and it's getting throttled down to 70 kbps in some cases. You try to ask people who have the same service how it is, or search for it on the internet but you don't really know. Now if my friend requests a refund do you think they will say "oh you are right we committed fraud, here's your money"?
Actually ISP's have been sued for not providing advertised speeds. I remember when AT&T was rolling out DSL, this happened. LMGTFY.
Here you go. Something recent from the cell phone era, but they've been pulling this for years.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]
Re: Let me ask this (Score:2)
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Your analogy should have had your friend then taking his ISP to [arbitration]. And if they are able to prove the ISP is not holding up their end of the deal then they might be able to get [a coupon for a small rebate]
Fixed that for you.
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If you sign up for gigabit internet and find instead when the service is installed that you are getting megabit internet, do you keep paying the same rate? Of course not.
These are not the same things. Musk did not offer to buy Twitter's claimed mDAU count. He offered to buy what is publicly known about the company. Only in the case of that public information being fraudulent will he be released from his offer.
A contract goes both ways. Twitter agrees to provide what it claims, which is a certain number of DAUs. If Musk finds out that those are fake numbers, does he pay the same rate? Of course not.
Incorrect. Twitter never agreed to any such thing.
They stand by their SEC filing. Their SEC filing is worded specifically to allow an arbitrary error in the mDAU estimation.
If by fake you mean fraudulent, then he has a way out. If by fake you mean incorrect, then tha
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The legal question is what the definition of "users" is.
Again, it doesn't matter what users are.
Unless fraud can be proven, he bought what he bought.
What Musk did is fairly common in big sales and mergers: you begin the process so that you can get access to the real data.
Flatly incorrect.
Public corporate mergers start with a notice of intent, at which point due diligence occurs.
He literally got the process back asswards.
This has led several people who actually handle corporate mergers to wonder if he has any fucking idea how they actually work.
Re:A very valid concern... (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing is MORE responsible for overvaluing Twitter than Elon Musk, it was his specific intention to overvalue it.
"Why would he pay $44bn for something only worth $2bn, with $8bn in potential lawsuits? So he can be $50bn in the hole? It makes no sense."
Then he shouldn't have made that offer and committed to it, specifically to create that problem. Musk absolutely should be in the hole, he asked for it.
Re:A very valid concern... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why would he pay $44bn for something only worth $2bn, with $8bn in potential lawsuits? So he can be $50bn in the hole? It makes no sense.
Why, indeed? Why would he make such a purchase offer without knowing what he was buying? Conversely, how could he not know what condition Twitter was actually in? Could it be because he waived due diligence, which exists specifically for this kind of discovery, offering instead a $1B cancellation fee which he now doesn't want to pay?
Elon did this to himself. To be fair though, so did Twitter. They heard he was going to skip due diligence and they were OK with that. That was idiotic. He obviously had some bu
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No, what matters is what percentage of ads that are presented are seen by real humans. That is the statistic Twitter was peddling, not any statistics on bots or spam accounts. They claimed essentially that of the monetizable daily users they have (users that get displayed ads), 5% of those were bot/spam, and 95% were seen by real people.
Elon made his offer at the worst possible time (TSLA stock high, market healthy), picked the value for the "4:20" reference rather than any proper valuation, and signed aw
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Sigh.. you don't seem to understand why this is an issue.
Actual users are what makes Twitter valuable. Twitter makes a portion of its money from advertising. Twitter for years has knowingly lied about the true count of their userbase to their advertising customers. Ads are usually broken up by impressions and clicks, the latter; clicks is worth more money.
So what we have is an overvalued company (less users than advertised) with huge liability issues (advertising revenue based on bot impressions and clicks) Even if Musk paid for just the real users, there's gonna be some fallout from this as advertisers start suing for false clicks and impressions. The lawsuits might be enough to wipe out any additional value in the company.
The whistleblower is largely talking about security, not users.
If anything, the 5% number that everyone (including Musk) doubted before Musk bought Twitter is looking more defensible, not less, as Musk has all piles of internal data but still can't prove it wrong.
I think the only way this whistleblower helps out Musk is if it's shown that the executives were misleading the board and the FTC about things that were material to the company.
Why would he pay $44bn for something only worth $2bn, with $8bn in potential lawsuits? So he can be $50bn in the hole? It makes no sense.
Everyone was asking that months ago when Musk actually bought Twitter,
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Twitter for years has knowingly lied about the true count of their userbase to their advertising customers.
Oh decided all the case based on merits already? Phew, you just saved a lot of lawyers time making claims, and judges evaluating them. Why don't you just decide everything everywhere right now with your knee-jerk jump to conclusions?
Now back in reality, companies don't knowingly lie, rather they offer just enough information to maintain plausible deniability. Based on my assessment no one on Slashdot has a clue what they are talking about. Now was I lying? Did you jump to a conclusion? Or maybe you should a
He wanted to take them down a peg (Score:2, Interesting)
His recent comments about journalism show how he feels about their favored audience over there. Here is how this one plays out:
1. Musk: Are these numbers accurate?
2. Twitter: Yes, we swear it.
3. Musk: OK, then here's a face value offer, but since I'm now a serious buyer, I need to be able to see the real numbers.
4. Twitter: We can't release those. It would destroy our business.
5. Stock market: (edges away from Twitter)
6. Musk: OK, then I want a fair price based on the actual numbers not the fake ones.
7. Twi
Re: He wanted to take them down a peg (Score:3)
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You could also paint Tesla into same corner because both electric cars and solar panels receive 'subsidies' through consumer payouts from government
I am just fine with that because Musk set himself squarely into 'losing propositions' that no other corporation would even consider entering, even though it was plainly obvious that there would eventually have to be a shift away from fossil fuels.
Musk took the risks to sink the bulk of his money into electric cars, solar panels and launch services. If the govern
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Tesla's time is nearly over. All the real car manufacturers are getting into electric cars and unlike Tesla, they know how to produce more than five models in 19 years.
Musk's solar panel business is a joke and would have gone bankrupt without Tesla bailing it out.
SpaceX seems to be doing OK, but I don't think it's ever been profitable. It's had to raise venture capital every year of its existence and according to Musk, it was going bust if Starship isn't launching Starlink satellites regularly by the end of
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seethe much?
Re: He wanted to take them down a peg (Score:2)
Re: He wanted to take them down a peg (Score:2)
SpaceX seems to be doing OK, but I don't think it's ever been profitable.
I tend to think it only hasn't been profitable for the same reason Amazon wasn't profitable for a very long time.
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SpaceX isn't profitable because it's been spending money blowing up and crashing rockets... which led to it being able to do something no one else can do, leading to a sharp decrease in the cost of launching mass to orbit. Now it's the best game in town for doing that, at a time when we're doing more of that, and it's also enabled an entire other business that's working to dominate another entire industry (wireless internet.)
The path to profitability for SpaceX is pretty clear. If Elon says otherwise then h
Re: He wanted to take them down a peg (Score:3)
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Yep, just that. I don't see how people don't understand that not throwing away every rocket you build is going to save money. SpaceX adopted a testing model in which move fast and break things actually made sense, and it led to them leading the pack.
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You could also paint Tesla into same corner because both electric cars and solar panels receive 'subsidies' through consumer payouts from government
Sure, you could consider Tesla subsidized in that sense. Of course since GM, Ford, and Chrysler have been directly bailed out by the government in the past, as well as receiving all kinds of subsidies again and again and again (how many times have they basically been handed land or facilities for factories essentially for free in order to promote local jobs, etc.?) it's not exactly as if there are many unsubsidized us car companies to compare Tesla too. Also, if we're talking about subsidizing at the consum
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Musk signed a deal where he waived due diligence. Effectively, he agreed to buy Twitter "as seen". The time to be asking all these questions was before he signed the contract.
If this goes to court, he will almost certainly be forced to follow through on the contract and buy the company.
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Incorrect. The offer came with disclaimers, including that certain information Twitter gave had to be valid
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I think you skipped the first few steps where Musk mucked around with a really incompetent half-hearted attempt at a hostile takeover. Then when he went ahead with the first part of the deal and everyone with any sense said it was a bad idea and "shouldn't due diligence come first?", etc. You know how, when a car is sold "as is" many states have a "lemon law" that still protects the consumer? That's at the consumer level. When it comes to massive purchases like this, things don't quite work the same way. Th
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Elon is doing Humanity a favor by exposing the fraud
You might be absolutely right here, and all it will cost him is $44,000,000,000
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time will tell
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I think because he is already a bit overstretched being CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Boring, Neuralink, etc, plus he is going to have to liquidate a lot of his Tesla stock to make this happen, he already has done some and it's caused little bit of a kerfuffle with the stockholders.
Now here is is making a very public and pretty controversial purchase, by himself that is by all acounts a pretty bad business move and one that will probably be looked at as another big distraction of his time.
Tesla is public so stabili
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Why would he have to stop being CEO of Tesla? It's not illegal to own one company while being CEO of a different one.
Because he will have to sell a huge part of his Tesla stock to raise the money to buy Twitter. Bear in mind that the inflated value of Tesla stock will plummet as soon as Musk loses the Twitter case, because of that fact that the stockmarket will know that Musk will be selling it. Musk will probably no longer be the majority shareholder of Tesla and therefore no longer entitled to a senior position.
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Hmmmm, seems to fit the description to me, particularly making broad claims that are easily disputed... just inviting a response good or bad
Flamebait [techtarget.com]
"On the Internet, flamebait is a "posting" or note on a Web site discussion forum, an online bulletin board, a Usenet newsgroup, or other public forum that is intended to elicit the extremely strong responses characteristic of flaming and active public discussions. To be effective, flamebait should be a bit subtle (but not too subtle) so that potential flamers
Elon über Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope he ends up paying US$1Billion break up fee, plus US$1Billion in legal fees for his attempt to get out of the deal, and further damages on top of that. Only a penalty like that will encourage him to stop making idiotic decisions.
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Only a penalty like that will encourage him to stop making idiotic decisions.
The world's richest person won't stop being the king of morons for $2B only.
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Not nearly enough of a penalty. This would not deter him from future manipulations.
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A reverse breakup fee paid from a buyer to a target applies when there is an outside reason a deal can’t close, such as regulatory intermediation or third-party financing concerns. A buyer can also walk if there’s fraud, assuming the discovery of incorrect information has a so-called “material adverse effect.” A market dip, like the current sell-off that has caused Twitter to lose more than $9 billion in market cap, wouldn’t count as a valid reason for Musk to cut loose — breakup fee or no breakup fee — according to a senior M&A lawyer familiar with the matter.
I think one of his first strategies was to try to claim the financing fell through because of the banks. A catch is that the financing can't have fallen through because of any influence you (Musk) have on the banks. However, text message between Musk and the banks clearly show he was trying to influence them.
So, he's going all in on trying to claim fraud. That's basically his last shot at getting out of the deal with minimal penalty. If he can't prove fraud he will wind u
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I hope he ends up paying US$1Billion break up fee, plus US$1Billion in legal fees for his attempt to get out of the deal
I hope he ends up paying $44billion for Twitter and runs it into the ground while erasing himself from the cult which surrounds him. Two birds with one stone.
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Near as I can tell, there's nothing stopping him from unloading it as well. Sure he'll take a loss, but he then he wouldn't own that steaming pile of rat droppings.
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Nah, only a penalty like actually running Twitter will encourage him to stop making idiotic decisions. He may end up running it into the ground. He may end up making it actually a great tool. If it screws up, it's his fault, and he can't escape that, since he bought it.
Of cos in the slim chance that it does do well, he will earn the appropriate respect. (especially if he can do it without screwing up Tesla / SpaceX / his other companies).
A billion here, a billion there will not affect him the same way it d
TWTR soon to be a penny stock (Score:2, Funny)
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Maybe, but not until it's first become a $54.20 stock
not the same (Score:2)
Elon is about to learn that the Court of Chancery and the Court of Public Opinion are not the same.
He already knows how to manipulate the latter; he's about to find out the former has much different standards of evidence.
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Delaware's courts should be put out of business. The only reason companies incorporate there is because of their lax laws.
Elon is a bad businessman (Score:5, Insightful)
Elon could not even get Texas to let him sell his vehicles directly. Vehicles made in Austin, TX get shipped out of state and then gets shipped back. Almost all the Red states are in the pocket of Big Oil, Auto stealerships, and are very hostile to Tesla.
He sucks up to the Republicans, kicks the greens who stuck by him through the thick and thin, through the 2018 crisis for Tesla. A few words of flattery and he lets them rob him blind.
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All social media numbers are fraudulent (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember that study that found that 8% of the internet user base was responsible for 85% of the clicks on websites, and most of those were under $40k/household/year in terms of income?
https://www.comscore.com/Insig... [comscore.com]
All of the numbers are fake. Most of the traffic is bots. Twitter has known this for years. Google knows it too, which is why they are spinning off their new technologies and imposing a hiring freeze. All of these companies are just the latest incarnation of IBM, the big corporate bean counters, except now they are grifters in the rent-seeking economy caused by entitlements taxes.
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Remember that study that found that 8% of the internet user base was responsible for 85% of the clicks on websites
Your own reference says, "The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks."
most of those were under $40k/household/year in terms of income?
And this, "In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000."
So, you've greatly exaggerated the claims in your own reference.