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Merged Musk buys Twitter!/ Elon Musk puts Twitter deal on hold....

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ponderingturtle said:
This is at odds with what has been explained on Opening Arguments. The billion dollars is the penalty for breaking the contract, which either side can get out of if they show the other was acting in bad faith. So twitter not providing accurate information during the negotiation phase would be an arguement to get out of paying the billion.
I would not think there is any reasonable way he can negotiate a different price outside of something like breaking the deal and paying the billion and starting over if Twitter is willing. Fighting over the billion seems unlikely to be doable if you are trying to negotiate a new deal.
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If you wander over to some of the discussions taking place elsewhere on the Internet, particularly those with "lawyers" posting, you'll see posts like: "Musk waived business due diligence in making his offer, and the Twitter board quite clearly relied on that waiver in accepting it." You'll then see arguments as to whether the waiver actually applies for all sorts of legal reasons. It appears to be pretty much of a "rabbit hole" and, unless the original deal is consummated by both parties in mutual agreement, one or more courts will try to decide.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
It's pretty obviously prompted by Musk's grandstanding. Perhaps it's just a wild coincidence.
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Musk made the problem high profile, so I don't doubt that it was prompted by him in the sense that the Texas AG noticed it because of him. But that doesn't mean the AG is acting on his behalf. That doesn't automatically follow, because again, other people have a direct interest in this too.
 
Ziggurat said:
Musk made the problem high profile, so I don't doubt that it was prompted by him in the sense that the Texas AG noticed it because of him. But that doesn't mean the AG is acting on his behalf. That doesn't automatically follow, because again, other people have a direct interest in this too.
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I don't think the AG is acting on Musk's behalf, I think he's just chasing right wing clout by going after one of their favorite boogiemen, social media companies.

I'd say the odds of them finding anything actionable are quite low.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
If you wander over to some of the discussions taking place elsewhere on the Internet, particularly those with "lawyers" posting, you'll see posts like: "Musk waived business due diligence in making his offer, and the Twitter board quite clearly relied on that waiver in accepting it." You'll then see arguments as to whether the waiver actually applies for all sorts of legal reasons. It appears to be pretty much of a "rabbit hole" and, unless the original deal is consummated by both parties in mutual agreement, one or more courts will try to decide.
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Oh this will put many lawyers kids through college if it does not go through.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
I'd say the odds of them finding anything actionable are quite low.
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Quite possibly. That still doesn't mean that Twitter is correct about its bot estimate. I'm assuming it isn't. This is one of those problems where it's in Twitter's interest to not solve it. So it very well may be true that their measurements only find 5% of accounts are bots (though they are rather secretive about how they measure this), and that they arrived at this number honestly (in the legal sense). But the actual number of bots could still be much higher. It probably is.
 
Ziggurat said:
Quite possibly. That still doesn't mean that Twitter is correct about its bot estimate. I'm assuming it isn't. This is one of those problems where it's in Twitter's interest to not solve it. So it very well may be true that their measurements only find 5% of accounts are bots (though they are rather secretive about how they measure this), and that they arrived at this number honestly (in the legal sense). But the actual number of bots could still be much higher. It probably is.
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Say, the mods here are pretty secretive about how they check for sock-puppets, and it's in the best interest of the ISF to appear to have more users than it does. Guess that means that we have a lot of sock puppets accounts here, too! Or, and I know this might be a stretch, but maybe your logic is faulty?
 
Ziggurat said:
Quite possibly. That still doesn't mean that Twitter is correct about its bot estimate. I'm assuming it isn't. This is one of those problems where it's in Twitter's interest to not solve it. So it very well may be true that their measurements only find 5% of accounts are bots (though they are rather secretive about how they measure this), and that they arrived at this number honestly (in the legal sense). But the actual number of bots could still be much higher. It probably is.
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I just can't imagine what difference it would make to the acquisition of the company by Musk. I mean, I'm not a dumb **** I get that bot accounts aren't real people so it skews the numbers for Twitter, but this shouldn't have been some sort of shock to Musk. How does it change things from Musk's perspective or is it just a cop-out? I'm assuming the latter.
 
plague311 said:
I just can't imagine what difference it would make to the acquisition of the company by Musk. I mean, I'm not a dumb **** I get that bot accounts aren't real people so it skews the numbers for Twitter, but this shouldn't have been some sort of shock to Musk. How does it change things from Musk's perspective or is it just a cop-out? I'm assuming the latter.
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The problem, from a financial perspective, is the uncertainty. Yeah, there are bots, everyone knows that. But is it 5%? 10%? 50%? We don't all know. And the difference matters, because advertisers are going to find out eventually (you have to plan like they will, anyways), and when they do, the ad revenues are going to be very different under those different scenarios.
 
I'll never understand why people try to follow two paths at once. Either be a businessman or be a celebrity. Musk could probably do either one of those things well if he didn't also try to do the other at the same time.
 
wareyin said:
Say, the mods here are pretty secretive about how they check for sock-puppets, and it's in the best interest of the ISF to appear to have more users than it does.
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Is it in their interest to inflate the numbers? I don't think so. This isn't a money-making venture, and the mods certainly don't get paid. I don't think anyone really cares all that much. Nor is there a financial incentive to create sock puppet accounts here, as there is for creating bot accounts on Twitter. And as far as I know, the mods here have never claimed to have measured the number of sock puppet accounts, nor can I think of any reason why anyone would depend upon an accurate representation of the number of accounts for anything that matters.

Guess that means that we have a lot of sock puppets accounts here, too! Or, and I know this might be a stretch, but maybe your logic is faulty?
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Or, maybe you came up with a really bad comparison that simply isn't equivalent.
 
Ziggurat said:
The problem, from a financial perspective, is the uncertainty. Yeah, there are bots, everyone knows that. But is it 5%? 10%? 50%? We don't all know. And the difference matters, because advertisers are going to find out eventually (you have to plan like they will, anyways), and when they do, the ad revenues are going to be very different under those different scenarios.
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Ok....Twitter was founded in 2006. If they've been reporting their numbers using the same means for >15 years then there should be significant historical numbers to go off of in order to get a clear view of the numbers, yes?

As you said, the advertisers are best served to have as close to an exact number as possible, and I'd bet dimes to donuts that they've spent more time than Musk looking into these stats.

So if the ad revenue for Twitter hasn't significantly changed +/- over the last few years, and that information is available, then Musk should have had all of the information he could possibly need to make the decision to buy the company before saying he would.

I'm sure I'm wrong, and I'm sure someone will take the opportunity to explain why, but this seems like Musk is having buyers remorse. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
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plague311 said:
Ok....Twitter was founded in 2006. If they've been reporting their numbers using the same means for >15 years
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Have they? Who the hell knows. They're opaque about how they determine the number of bot accounts. We have no way of determining whether they've been doing it the same way for the entire time.

And if they have, then that's a really bad sign. They should be adapting how they discover bots, because bot makers are not going to sit still and keep using the same methods to create and run bot accounts. They are going to innovate, so Twitter should be innovating as well to try to keep pace.

As you said, the advertisers are best served to have as close to an exact number as possible, and I'd bet dimes to donuts that they've spent more time than Musk looking into these stats.
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If Twitter isn't detailing their methods or giving access to the raw data (hint: they aren't), then it doesn't matter how much time you spend looking at it, you won't make a lot of headway. Musk's advantage isn't that he's more brilliant or that he's spent more time, but that he has more leverage to get Twitter to open up.

I'm sure I'm wrong, and I'm sure someone will take the opportunity to explain why, but this seems like Musk is having buyers remorse. Nothing more, nothing less.
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That might be a factor, but the issue is still quite genuine.
 
Ziggurat said:
Musk's advantage isn't that he's more brilliant or that he's spent more time, but that he has more leverage to get Twitter to open up.
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That very much remains to be seen. You seem to be giving his "bots" complaint a lot of credence, while it strikes me as a pretext to try and back out of the deal.

I don't see any reason to assume that this stunt is going to lead to Twitter publishing or disclosing any of its proprietary data around how they detect and deal with bots.
 
He made the offer without confirming this information. That's his foul-up. Let's be honest, he just ran his mouth, got egged on by his fanbois, and bit off more than he can chew. Unfortunately, he had to batter the stock of 2 different companies (that we know of) to get his ego checked and hurt a lot of people. I hope the SEC and FTC give him a colonoscopy.
 
Ziggurat said:
Have they? Who the hell knows. They're opaque about how they determine the number of bot accounts. We have no way of determining whether they've been doing it the same way for the entire time.

And if they have, then that's a really bad sign. They should be adapting how they discover bots, because bot makers are not going to sit still and keep using the same methods to create and run bot accounts. They are going to innovate, so Twitter should be innovating as well to try to keep pace.

If Twitter isn't detailing their methods or giving access to the raw data (hint: they aren't), then it doesn't matter how much time you spend looking at it, you won't make a lot of headway. Musk's advantage isn't that he's more brilliant or that he's spent more time, but that he has more leverage to get Twitter to open up.

That might be a factor, but the issue is still quite genuine.
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If all you say is true, and this has been well-known for a long time, then why the **** did he bid on it in the first place? I mean, you're basically saying that we can't trust twitter about anything they say and that it's been known for a long time that we can't trust them.

The entire point I was making is if that's true then nothing has changed especially previous to Musk's proposal. Anyone that offered 40 ******* billion should have the knowledge that you're implying is known to everyone from advertisers to, well, you. That's my point.

ETA: As to the "twitter opening up because for Musk", that's giving credit where it sure as hell isn't due. Do you seriously think they're going to change anything now? That's a pipe dream. They owe Musk nothing, and it's Musk that's trying to pull out. I'm assuming if Twitter had a lot to hide then they wouldn't have wanted to hand over the keys to a loud-mouthed dip **** like Musk in the first place, just for him to air out their dirty laundry. Then again, at that point they might not care.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
That very much remains to be seen. You seem to be giving his "bots" complaint a lot of credence, while it strikes me as a pretext to try and back out of the deal.
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It really is the perfect scapegoat. If Musk tried to complain that the Marketing Director lied about last year's ad revenue, then we could just compare the e-mail to the actual numbers, and see whether or not the complaint was true. But when Musk says, "They're not counting the bots right," then that is effectively unfalsifiable. Whatever data Twitter produces, if it doesn't show more bots than initially stated, then that just proves that they are hiding the truth. It's Obama's real birth certificate all over again.

This, of course, is not a good factual or legal argument. It's damage control manufactured for unskeptical rubes. It's no surprise that the Texas AG is playing his part with the alley-oop (assuming, of course, that he hasn't fallen for it himself).
 
plague311 said:
If all you say is true, and this has been well-known for a long time, then why the **** did he bid on it in the first place? I mean, you're basically saying that we can't trust twitter about anything they say and that it's been known for a long time that we can't trust them.
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In his first PR appearance after losing the billion dollar penalty, Musk will state that exposing the evil liars within Twitter was his true plan all along.
 
Texas AG would lick Musk’s balls to distract from his own problems and make good with the fanbois.

Musk knew of the bot issues prior to his bid and I’m wondering how his “no due diligence” clause will actually function if that is the reason he uses to bail on the deal.

If you try to buy XOM you can’t then claim to not know anything about how many environmental issues there are with their business. But you can promise to fix healthcare and then claim nobody knew how complex it was. I’m just not sure where this falls on that spectrum.
 
Ziggurat said:
Is it in their interest to inflate the numbers? I don't think so. This isn't a money-making venture, and the mods certainly don't get paid. I don't think anyone really cares all that much. Nor is there a financial incentive to create sock puppet accounts here, as there is for creating bot accounts on Twitter.
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Ok, walk me through how you think there is a financial incentive to create bots on Twitter. Granted, I don't have an account so I'm sure you're much more knowledgable about it than I am. That said, Twitter isn't the one creating bots. Twitter accounts who are followed by bots also aren't being paid for how many followers they have. So....what's the financial incentive to create Twitter bots?


Ziggurat said:
And as far as I know, the mods here have never claimed to have measured the number of sock puppet accounts, nor can I think of any reason why anyone would depend upon an accurate representation of the number of accounts for anything that matters.


Or, maybe you came up with a really bad comparison that simply isn't equivalent.
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The equivalence depends on applying your own standards equally, but I do understand how that can be difficult when you start from a politically motivated position with regard to Twitter, then work backwards from that.
 
wareyin said:
Ok, walk me through how you think there is a financial incentive to create bots on Twitter.
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You can buy followers. I thought everyone knew that.

That said, Twitter isn't the one creating bots.
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I'm sure that's true, and I never claimed otherwise. Nevertheless, they still benefit from it.

Twitter accounts who are followed by bots also aren't being paid for how many followers they have.
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True. It's the other way around: you pay for the bots to follow you. And the motivation is probably that accounts with more followers get higher visibility in search results, etc. But it kind of doesn't really matter what the motivation is, because people are doing that. We know they are doing it. There isn't any uncertainty about that.

So....what's the financial incentive to create Twitter bots?
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The bot creators get paid, not by Twitter, but by the accounts who hire them to create followers.

Yes, it's ridiculous to pay for fake followers. But people do it anyways. That's just a fact.
 
Ziggurat said:
You can buy followers. I thought everyone knew that.



I'm sure that's true, and I never claimed otherwise. Nevertheless, they still benefit from it.



True. It's the other way around: you pay for the bots to follow you. And the motivation is probably that accounts with more followers get higher visibility in search results, etc. But it kind of doesn't really matter what the motivation is, because people are doing that. We know they are doing it. There isn't any uncertainty about that.



The bot creators get paid, not by Twitter, but by the accounts who hire them to create followers.

Yes, it's ridiculous to pay for fake followers. But people do it anyways. That's just a fact.
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Well, I was unaware that you could buy fake followers, so everyone didn't know that. It hadn't even occurred to me that people would.

Although if it's that easy to buy fake followers, surely it's also that easy to track those fake followers.
 
wareyin said:
Well, I was unaware that you could buy fake followers, so everyone didn't know that. It hadn't even occurred to me that people would.
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People do it to create the illusion of clout.

Although if it's that easy to buy fake followers, surely it's also that easy to track those fake followers.
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Depends on how sophisticated these services are, I suppose. And also on how much Twitter bothers to combat the problem.

Twitter's advertisers, interestingly, don't particularly seem to care how many fake accounts there are, so Musk's claim that this question is "fundamental to the financial health of Twitter" is largely ********.
 
wareyin said:
Well, I was unaware that you could buy fake followers, so everyone didn't know that. It hadn't even occurred to me that people would.
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It's quite strange, I certainly grant you that, and in a sensible society no one would do something so silly.

Alas, we do not live in a sensible society.

Although if it's that easy to buy fake followers, surely it's also that easy to track those fake followers.
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It's not necessarily that easy, because some of those companies try hard to make those fake accounts look not fake. From the "High-Quality Profiles" blurb at that link:

All of the profiles we use have profile pictures, posts, and bio information. Therefore, there is no risk that someone would figure out that you’re using our service.​

Making these fake accounts look real is a selling point, precisely because people buying fake followers don't want anyone to know that they are fake.
 
plague311 said:
ETA: As to the "twitter opening up because for Musk", that's giving credit where it sure as hell isn't due. Do you seriously think they're going to change anything now? That's a pipe dream. They owe Musk nothing, and it's Musk that's trying to pull out. I'm assuming if Twitter had a lot to hide then they wouldn't have wanted to hand over the keys to a loud-mouthed dip **** like Musk in the first place, just for him to air out their dirty laundry. Then again, at that point they might not care.
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Washington Post headline:
In reversal, Twitter plans to comply with Musk’s demands for data

We shall see.
 
They probably just wanted to make sure that everything in there is covered by an NDA. You know his ego is going to make him start blurting things out.
 
At this point the "**** or Get Off the Pot" clause of "Everything, Everywhere" should be invoked and Musk should be given 48 hours to either buy Twitter or shut up about it.
 
JoeMorgue said:
At this point the "**** or Get Off the Pot" clause of "Everything, Everywhere" should be invoked and Musk should be given 48 hours to either buy Twitter or shut up about it.
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Nah, keep it going up until the point where he has to write a rubber check. It's like that episode of Seinfeld where Susan's parents made George drive them up to a house in the Hamptons that they knew he didn't have.
 
I just don't want to spend another 83 weeks or however long this is going to go on watching Elon Musk (and Twitter to a much smaller degree) edge each other anymore.

90% of America is out there rolling pennies for gas money and a spectacle of someone deciding whether or not to spend 47 quadrillion dollars buying... nothing is just... well it's gonna make the big vein in my head pop.
 
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I Am The Scum said:
Nah, keep it going up until the point where he has to write a rubber check. It's like that episode of Seinfeld where Susan's parents made George drive them up to a house in the Hamptons that they knew he didn't have.
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So, is Tesla's stock price still falling and is Twitter still valued way less than Elon said he would buy it for? And now Bitcoin is tanking which must be bad for him as didn't he buy a heap of that junk when it was highly valued? Now there is some dispute about how many bots there are on Twitter, and some guy from Google thinks his bot is alive.

Weird planet we live on.
 
Headline: "Bitcoin become sentient, buys Twitter and reveals Elon Musk is a bot."
 
TragicMonkey said:
I'll never understand why people try to follow two paths at once. Either be a businessman or be a celebrity. Musk could probably do either one of those things well if he didn't also try to do the other at the same time.
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If you are in showbiz doing both at the same time is part of the job, but IMHO it's pretty hard to people in other inidstries to pull it off.
I actually think part of Musk's problem is he tries too hard; it's obvious he is trying to grab headlines. It actully works better if it's not as obvoious as it is for Musk.
I think he turn to the right polirically is losing him a lot of support he had among Liberals and the Greens because of Tesla.
 
angrysoba said:
So, is Tesla's stock price still falling and is Twitter still valued way less than Elon said he would buy it for? And now Bitcoin is tanking which must be bad for him as didn't he buy a heap of that junk when it was highly valued? Now there is some dispute about how many bots there are on Twitter, and some guy from Google thinks his bot is alive.

Weird planet we live on.
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I read something recently about that:

Tesla's Bitcoin Bet Turns into a Nightmare

As far as Tesla's share price, I googled that and it is down by 46% YTD (since January 1st). On the other hand, compared to this time last year, it is actually up about 4%.

Still higher than the $420/share that he joked about taking the company private at.

My personal opinion is that the company is grossly overvalued, but what do I know, right?

Let's compare Tesla to Toyota, just for ships and giggles.

Tesla market cap: $662.32 Billion
Toyota market cap: $213.36 Billion

Hmmm, Tesla worth 3 times more than Toyota.

Top 10 Biggest Car Manufacturers by Revenue (2021)

Toyota was No. 2 after Volkswagon, with $249.4 billion in revenue. Tesla was not in the top 10. Apparently they had $53.8 billion in revenue last year. Fair enough, but not enough to make the top 10 car companies in the world.

In terms of number of vehicles sold, Tesla didn't make the top 15 in the world last year:

https://www.factorywarrantylist.com/car-sales-by-manufacturer.html

Profits?

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220511/p2g/00m/0bu/039000c

Toyota's FY 2021 operating profit soars 36% to record $23 bil.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/26/business/tesla-earnings.html

Tesla said Wednesday that its profit leapt more than sixfold last year to $5.5 billion, the highest total in its 19-year history, as sales soared further, especially in Europe and China.
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OK, so I guess people are betting that in the long term Tesla will be able to consistently generate 3 times the profit that Toyota does. Personally, I wouldn't take that bet (I'd bet on Toyota).
 
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