Musk wants public debate with Twitter CEO instead of that upcoming court trial

[wanderingfool2]

4 hours ago, Ultraforce said:

Note:  Not a Lawyer and for the twitter stuff I don't remember the explanation quite as well as for the whole thing where there have been lawsuits where people are forced to go through with a merger. But I believe that while if the data they sent was inaccurate it would possibly be considered a breach it would be considered not substantial enough to be able to leave the contract. So they would maybe need to reduce the price of twitter by a billion or so, but unless it's something like over 50% bots it would not be a substantial breach.

It depends though.  Their business of attracting advertisers is based on the # of bots and the mDAU...so a question starts to be raised what is a material amount.

 

If the wording of the agreement is as quoted in the counter suit as section 4.6(a).  there could be a reasonable argument twitter messed up (unless they disclosed that information, which the claim is they didn't)...because changing the mDAU dating back years by 6% (6% in your favor) that to me is a material change.  They use the mDAU for advertising stuff, and as other metrics...the m literally stands for monitizable.  There are a bunch of issues with the way Twitter is doing things.

 

Have 6% less monitizable users I think should constitute a material change; especially if you change it 3 days after the merger deal was signed.

 

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Twitter is a private company, and it chooses to do nothing about bots and spam

Twitter is a public company, not a private company.

[Sauron]

11 hours ago, CTR640 said:

So he never even intented to buy it?

I don't think so, or if he did he didn't actually realize what he was doing

[Taf the Ghost]

5 hours ago, Spotty said:

Seems like he knows legally speaking he might not have a good position to stand on and is hoping to win the argument in the court of public opinion. Either that or he's just jealous of how much attention the public heard v Depp trial received and now wants to create his own public shitshow.

In this case, Musk can win on Optics, simply because he's well aware of how much Twitter (and everyone else) is actually cooking their books. The Legal side is always a crapshoot. (Really ends up mattering more about how much you pay lawyers.) The PR/Optics approach would meet his objectives a lot better than going the legal route. The other part is that Twitter Execs (and all other Big Tech) have massive legal exposure over user counts & view counts.

Realistically, they will only protest for so long. Full discovery/open exposure would be a watershed moment in the Big Tech Era. It'll be really ugly. Especially if the intentional manipulation & government interaction ever fully becomes public. 

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It depends though.  Their business of attracting advertisers is based on the # of bots and the mDAU...so a question starts to be raised what is a material amount.

 

If the wording of the agreement is as quoted in the counter suit as section 4.6(a).  there could be a reasonable argument twitter messed up (unless they disclosed that information, which the claim is they didn't)...because changing the mDAU dating back years by 6% (6% in your favor) that to me is a material change.  They use the mDAU for advertising stuff, and as other metrics...the m literally stands for monitizable.  There are a bunch of issues with the way Twitter is doing things.

 

Have 6% less monitizable users I think should constitute a material change; especially if you change it 3 days after the merger deal was signed.

 

Twitter is a public company, not a private company.

The Static Page w/ Banner Ads market fell apart when it became clear so much traffic is actually Bots & interaction was poor. We're rapidly approaching that with "interactive Social Media". Twitter has always been the weakest because their RoI on ad spends has always been terrible. i.e. they've long had an artificial numbers problem.

The sub-issue to the Bot problem is that all of the major social media companies have Insiders that protect the big Bot farms. Had a good discussion with someone that had some serious interactions with a Bot Controller. While never explicitly stated as such, it's very obvious they have inside protection. Official or Unofficial or just de facto, I don't know. But, as long as the bots look real, the companies are also happy to look the other way.

[Isuck Assimov]

no perjury in a public debate i guess

[Doobeedoo]

That would be a Twitch stream drama for sure with modern day Twitch and Twitter cesspool. It's not worth of fraction of it so lame. Waste. All of it, money attention whatever.

[mr moose]

22 hours ago, BetteBalterZen said:

Everything is a controlled outcome anyways in the end, so no, I do not care. 

And the less you care the more they control.  It doesn't have to be that bad.

16 hours ago, Ultraforce said:

But a debatee would do absolutely nothing. Elon Musk wagging around his **** or trying to do a public debate doesn't make it legally binding. He signed a contract and there's a court case about him breaking the contract and that's what decides what will happen.

 

A public debate does not need a legally binding outcome in order to be beneficial for the greater public.  If people start to wake up to the BS that is the twittersphere and start questioning the validity of everything they read then the general population will be in a better place already.

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

 

Here's the thing. 

 

We should not care....

snip

...

 

 

Then you reap the consequences of not caring.

 

I am sick of the "it's a private company" line of arguing.  Being a private company does not absolve them from the impact of their actions. 

[BetteBalterZen]

23 minutes ago, mr moose said:

And the less you care the more they control.  It doesn't have to be that bad.

You know, I agree, I like your way of seeing things... But I guess I don't believe things will change

[mr moose]

4 minutes ago, BetteBalterZen said:

You know, I agree, I like your way of seeing things... But I guess I don't believe things will change

And I can understand that,  I have been an avid follower of politics and corporate business practice since the early 90's,  I can honestly say they have done a great job in disenfranchising the population.   I guess that's why I am so in favor of public debate over everything and transparency for all things.

[BetteBalterZen]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I guess that's why I am so in favor of public debate over everything and transparency for all things.

I understand that, and I agree. 

[Ultraforce]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

And the less you care the more they control.  It doesn't have to be that bad.

 

A public debate does not need a legally binding outcome in order to be beneficial for the greater public.  If people start to wake up to the BS that is the twittersphere and start questioning the validity of everything they read then the general population will be in a better place already.

The general public is likely not well equiped to actually understand anything substantial that would be discussed in public. Additionally, Musk in a public debate would be able to lie with impunity. Given their track record, I feel like the likely result would be that the Musk cult would just get louder, most people wouldn't care, and those that do would likely say that the Twitter CEO didn't feel particularly charismatic. Since the Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal is a software engineer who has been CEO for less than a year. His job historically has not been to get the public to buy the story twitter is selling, but to make and manage projects internally. Maybe he's a great speaker, I don't know I've not watched interviews of Parag, but given Elon's main skill is talking I don't think it would exactly work well.

Perhaps there is an issue with lack of transparency but I don't think doing popularity contests would be the solution.

[Commodus]

Like the OP said... Musk wants this because he knows he'll likely lose in court. He didn't bother with proper due diligence before making the offer and doesn't want to be held accountable for it. Folks can make all the unsupported claims they like about eeeeevil Twitter conspiracies, but the fact remains that Musk didn't do his homework; he doesn't get to bluff his way out.

 

Musk has long been a bit dodgy, but his increasingly garbage behavior (in business, political views and personal life) is becoming a serious liability to his companies. I'm not going to buy a Tesla until the firm drops Musk as CEO and puts an adult in charge.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

Then you reap the consequences of not caring.

 

I am sick of the "it's a private company" line of arguing.  Being a private company does not absolve them from the impact of their actions. 

If you're sick of the "it's a private company" (even a public company), type of excuses, then we need to stop giving companies the same privileges as a person without giving them the same consequences of one.

 

Here, it's very simple:

1) If a corporation is found guilty of wrong-doing that directly leads to death of ANYONE, ANYWHERE

then - the corporation should have every single person responsible for it happening, from the CEO to the person who ignored the reports/warning signs hauled into court, and determine who ignored their duty (answer: it was likely everyone beneath the CEO except programmers who wrote the reporting tools) and allowed it to happen, and the jail time split between everyone responsible by % of responsibility.

2) If a corporation is accused of fraud, same as above, except the damages are dropped on the staff by % of their salary+bonuses that the fraud enabled. 

 

Neither of these happen. We seem to deem corporations above doing as much harm to people as possible. That needs to change.

 

What Musk is proposing here will do nothing but embarrass himself further.

 

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

Like the OP said... Musk wants this because he knows he'll likely lose in court. He didn't bother with proper due diligence before making the offer and doesn't want to be held accountable for it. Folks can make all the unsupported claims they like about eeeeevil Twitter conspiracies, but the fact remains that Musk didn't do his homework; he doesn't get to bluff his way out.

It's funny that you use the unsupported claims and then claiming he didn't do proper due diligence.  The counter-suit directly indicates that there were contractual obligations in place in lieu of the standard due diligence; specifically where the SEC numbers filed were accurate.  3 days after the signing of the agreement they changed the SEC numbers (specifically the monitizable daily active user count dropped).

 

To quote in a filing with the SEC as well regarding the deal (which doesn't have due diligence)

Quote

While Section 6.4 of the Merger Agreement requires Twitter to provide Mr. Musk and his advisors all data and information that Mr. Musk requests “for any reasonable business purpose related to the consummation of the transaction

So yea, no due diligence but there were provisions still put in place which pretty much amount to being able to do the due diligence claims.  The fact that it's taking them months to give him access to data, and still having it misconfigured really makes me suspicious.  [Especially since they aren't giving the metrics on how they calculate the mDAU].  Look at how long it took for them to give the firehose data (and even then apparently it wasn't the properly configured firehose data)

 

What is known now though is they base the mDAU off of 100 user size a day, so in a quarter they have 9000 samples to calculate a metric.  When they are estimating over a hundred million mDAU's a day, using a sample size of 100 is absurdly small.

 

At this point we can only see what is released when it's in court, although it appears as though the court seems to be leaning towards allowing Twitter to redact...so we might not be allowed to see what evidence they are or aren't allowed presenting

[Commodus]

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's funny that you use the unsupported claims and then claiming he didn't do proper due diligence.  The counter-suit directly indicates that there were contractual obligations in place in lieu of the standard due diligence; specifically where the SEC numbers filed were accurate.  3 days after the signing of the agreement they changed the SEC numbers (specifically the monitizable daily active user count dropped).

 

To quote in a filing with the SEC as well regarding the deal (which doesn't have due diligence)

So yea, no due diligence but there were provisions still put in place which pretty much amount to being able to do the due diligence claims.  The fact that it's taking them months to give him access to data, and still having it misconfigured really makes me suspicious.  [Especially since they aren't giving the metrics on how they calculate the mDAU].  Look at how long it took for them to give the firehose data (and even then apparently it wasn't the properly configured firehose data)

 

What is known now though is they base the mDAU off of 100 user size a day, so in a quarter they have 9000 samples to calculate a metric.  When they are estimating over a hundred million mDAU's a day, using a sample size of 100 is absurdly small.

 

At this point we can only see what is released when it's in court, although it appears as though the court seems to be leaning towards allowing Twitter to redact...so we might not be allowed to see what evidence they are or aren't allowed presenting

The question is, though, whether changing the SEC data is actually a problem. The timing of the data change is eyebrow-raising, but not necessarily a "gotcha;" Musk may need to show that the original estimates were clearly negligent or made in bad faith, and I'm not sure he can.

 

As it stands, the fact remains that Musk agreed to those contractual obligations in lieu of due diligence. That's on him, not Twitter. A good businessperson who's not sure about a company's claims... well, probably doesn't make a bid in the first place, but certainly demands to check the books before signing a deal. Especially when that deal is worth $44 billion.

 

For that matter, they don't challenge the target company's CEO to a public debate on the matter... certainly not when they've been slapped by the SEC for violating finance rules with social media posts. The simple reality is that, for all of Musk's oh-woe-is-me posturing, he's the shady one here.

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

The timing of the data change is eyebrow-raising, but not necessarily a "gotcha;" Musk may need to show that the original estimates were clearly negligent or made in bad faith, and I'm not sure he can

Well I mean if they are agreeing to a contract that says the SEC information is accurate, and then 3 days later they change the SEC numbers...that could very well be the start of acting in bad faith.  Add onto it that the contract allows Musk to request reasonable information in regards to the operation/finances...which given they didn't tell him the metrics they used to calculate mDAU's apparently, and they don't give him access to properly verify.  That of course will all be the matter of the courts to decide, but there is still a lot of stuff with Twitter that really doesn't seem to make sense.

[AnonymousGuy]

15 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The Static Page w/ Banner Ads market fell apart when it became clear so much traffic is actually Bots & interaction was poor. We're rapidly approaching that with "interactive Social Media". Twitter has always been the weakest because their RoI on ad spends has always been terrible. i.e. they've long had an artificial numbers problem.

The sub-issue to the Bot problem is that all of the major social media companies have Insiders that protect the big Bot farms. Had a good discussion with someone that had some serious interactions with a Bot Controller. While never explicitly stated as such, it's very obvious they have inside protection. Official or Unofficial or just de facto, I don't know. But, as long as the bots look real, the companies are also happy to look the other way.

Lezbianest, Twitter probably enjoys being able to pump up their "user" numbers and fake having growth.

 

"Don't ask don't tell" re: bots.

 

As long as the bots aren't being so blatant it gets them in trouble, why should they actively root them out?

[Kisai]

19 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The Static Page w/ Banner Ads market fell apart when it became clear so much traffic is actually Bots & interaction was poor. We're rapidly approaching that with "interactive Social Media". Twitter has always been the weakest because their RoI on ad spends has always been terrible. i.e. they've long had an artificial numbers problem.

Because nobody wants ads. The only "working" ads on the internet are video ads that are in-stream with the normal video, eg youtube and twitch. Video ads everywhere else do poorly because they can be blocked.

 

19 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The sub-issue to the Bot problem is that all of the major social media companies have Insiders that protect the big Bot farms. Had a good discussion with someone that had some serious interactions with a Bot Controller. While never explicitly stated as such, it's very obvious they have inside protection. Official or Unofficial or just de facto, I don't know. But, as long as the bots look real, the companies are also happy to look the other way.

That sounds like BS, citation needed.

 

Many companies, from MMORPG's to e-commerce, to Social Media "know of" prolific bot users, and know that if they crack down hard on them, they will get many people who aren't "bots" caught in the cross-fire, and thus releasing even more bots upon the platform just to destroy the platform's usability by anyone. DDoS by garbage content and garbage interactions is just as easily a death flag for the site. Ever notice how every time Twitter, or Discord is down, the internet has a meltdown? 

 

I no doubt believe there is a "Bot problem" of some sort, but these companies are absolutely not protecting the fake content and fake engagement. To do so is to be harming their own business models, and advertisers would flee with another "adpocalypse" the site if they felt the site's fake traffic was enough to waste their spend on it.

[Taf the Ghost]

8 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Lezbianest, Twitter probably enjoys being able to pump up their "user" numbers and fake having growth.

 

"Don't ask don't tell" re: bots.

 

As long as the bots aren't being so blatant it gets them in trouble, why should they actively root them out?

Depending on where the Bot Farm is, some of them are Intelligence Agencies, which is why they'll look the other way. 

 

I'm not cynical about Social Media, but most don't realize much of it is simply faked to appear real. You do enough study of what real activity looks like & it's fairly simple to "fake it". That's the passive "game" to the space. The active game is players you don't want to end up on the wrong side of. And, if you don't play ball, they will destroy you. Social Media is a means to power & control and it's a world you better be prepared for if you get involved. That's why Twitter's board had to drag Jack back to Twitter. After the CIA & MI6 used Twitter to set off several coups in North Africa, the upper levels of the place became completely unmanageable. 

 

Oh, and having watched Twitter's algo & internal displays break a couple of times, most tweets are by humans are about their pets or their family. Most of the place is actually little different than Facebook, but it's also an interconnected PR platform, which is what makes it really valuable.

 

I feel no discussion of Twitter can ever be complete without mentioning they Bought then Closed Vine. The core idea was taken up by ByteDance and, well, TikTok happened.

[mr moose]

21 hours ago, Ultraforce said:

The general public is likely not well equiped to actually understand anything substantial that would be discussed in public. Additionally, Musk in a public debate would be able to lie with impunity. Given their track record, I feel like the likely result would be that the Musk cult would just get louder, most people wouldn't care, and those that do would likely say that the Twitter CEO didn't feel particularly charismatic. Since the Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal is a software engineer who has been CEO for less than a year. His job historically has not been to get the public to buy the story twitter is selling, but to make and manage projects internally. Maybe he's a great speaker, I don't know I've not watched interviews of Parag, but given Elon's main skill is talking I don't think it would exactly work well.

Perhaps there is an issue with lack of transparency but I don't think doing popularity contests would be the solution.

It's not a popularity contest and people have he right to see the evidence if twitter are not being honest.   Also, I don't know what you think this debate will contain, but given the idea is for transparency so the public can see it all I don't know how you can conclude the general public wouldn't understand.

 

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

If you're sick of the "it's a private company" (even a public company), type of excuses, then we need to stop giving companies the same privileges as a person without giving them the same consequences of one.

I'm all for making companies accountable for their actions.  I've never said anything else. 

 

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

Here, it's very simple:

1) If a corporation is found guilty of wrong-doing that directly leads to death of ANYONE, ANYWHERE

then - the corporation should have every single person responsible for it happening, from the CEO to the person who ignored the reports/warning signs hauled into court, and determine who ignored their duty (answer: it was likely everyone beneath the CEO except programmers who wrote the reporting tools) and allowed it to happen, and the jail time split between everyone responsible by % of responsibility.

2) If a corporation is accused of fraud, same as above, except the damages are dropped on the staff by % of their salary+bonuses that the fraud enabled. 

 

Neither of these happen. We seem to deem corporations above doing as much harm to people as possible. That needs to change.

 

What Musk is proposing here will do nothing but embarrass himself further.

 

 

None of the above will even remotely be considered while people play the "it's a private company" defense.

[LAwLz]

On 8/10/2022 at 11:40 AM, mr moose said:

I am sick of the "it's a private company" line of arguing.  Being a private company does not absolve them from the impact of their actions. 

"It's a private company" is just a bad way of saying "I don't want to think about the bad things this company does. So stop bringing it up". 

It, like "if you don't like it don't buy it", is a thought-terminating cliché. Something said to "end the debate" without actually responding to any of the criticism raised.

 

A company is doing something bad? Let's just say they are legally allowed to do so and let's not think about the implications of that, or analyse if their actions should have an effect on how we view said company. 

[Beskamir]

Musk clearly just wants to unleash his army of muskrats on twitter bypassing the legal system entirely.

[Elijah Kamski]

On 8/9/2022 at 8:41 PM, Lightwreather JfromN said:

Meh. tbh, I couldn't care less, I don't use Twitter on a daily basis nor do I care much about this drama. But either way, this statement feels fishy and gives me, "I can't win at court, so might as well try and lie about it in a public debate where such stuff is not easily verifiable. Plus, if they don't agree, I can use this against them" kinda vibes.

My thoughts exactly

Tbh, once you're off twitter, you feel so free

[niofalpha]

He's going to get absolutely destroyed in court lmao