282 Comments

5% was a bogus figure if you looked at any of the responses under a criminal like Trudeau’s posts—you had to dig to find the comments where people decried him, even though they were massively liked. Somehow the lowest ratio’d ones always got boosted to the foreground too.

Most of the liberal and democratic elite have benefited from these automated systems, no doubt. In fact, all of social media is likely more of a farce than we’ve been willing to believe.

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Wow. Maybe this was Musk's plan all along. To expose Twitter BS. Maybe he doesn't and never actually wanted to own it.

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More than 1/5 of Twitter is fake but conservative voices are the problem? Twitter and the left suck balls. I’m embarrassed to say I once voted blue.

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Not to mention the stock is yrading almost $20 beliw the bid. Musk wont pay $54 and the market will punish Twtr for lying about spam accounts this will be ugly for Twtr

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Berenson v. Twitter is supremely important, regardless of whether the deal is closed or not.

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Twitter's screwed. If they have lied on their filings they have no leg to stand on. Their share price ultimately collapses unless they take whatever he offers.

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Drat, I was looking forward to Twesla.

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May 17, 2022·edited May 17, 2022

With all the AI behind it, I doubt the board could know unless they turned it all off; and that would be bad for them. This could also be construed as possible fraud both to Musk & existing shareholders as well, making metrics seem better than they were.

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This was a ploy to expose operation mocking BIRD 🐦

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This sounds like CLASSIC Musk: lob a grenade and see who runs for cover. A master showman!

BTW, I keep hearing people compare Musk to Thomas Edison. I submit he's more like the 21st century Howard Hughes.

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Think about all the pension plans or other investment companies who were lied to about Twitter’s value....all the investors....fraud comes to mind.

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I got put in timeout for calling “dr” Jill Biden a wench. Don’t you love how Twitter is looking out for us

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Think of all the pension funds invested in Twitter who can, and should, sue them for fraud. Not a Musk fan but damn, give the dude credit for exposing Twitter without spending a dime.

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founding

I even believe 20% is still very low number I would say -n the 30% range. Advertisers have been lied to for years.

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I don't really care but this is just business. Seen done deals collapse at last minute before, and deals that look like they blew up get put back together again. Either way, Musk was never going to save you. Maybe just a nice distraction. Who knows

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May 17, 2022·edited May 17, 2022

I think Twitter should DIE. It is not the Public Square as touted by many. Twitter is disinformation! As the stock plummets and the SEC sees they are criminals, Musk is effectively forcing it out of the ugly shadows. #deathtotwitter First let me say that I know I don’t matter in the Twitterverse. That said, I left Twitter and my @2000 hard fought followers when they banned Trump. I set up a new account at the end of last year. I cannot get above 153 follows to save my life. They hide my comments behind the “may be offensive tag. Take a look some time at the comments behind those responses. I have yet to find offensive comments. That is where we little guys live. Existing only to read the Bluecheck liberals BS. Go get them Alex and hurry before they are no more

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According to it's 10-Q filing "We define mDAU as people, organizations, or other accounts who logged in or were otherwise authenticated and accessed Twitter on any given day through twitter.com, Twitter applications that are able to show ads, or paid Twitter products, including subscriptions."

"[...] there are a number of false or spam accounts in existence on our platform. We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter."

Obviously showing ads to bots is worthless, so validating or amending the claim is essential to valuation. Standard due diligence.

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I suspect this was Musk's strategy all along. First get the board to agree to the tender, then tank the stock with public pronouncements, then get the shareholders involved in an ugly fight over false claims on bots, causing the advertisers to revolt. In the end, Elon will buy it for half price and they will thank him for it.

You don't get to be the world's richest man by being an idiot. There are no idiot billionaires (for those who accused Trump of being an idiot). The capitalist is schooling the wokesters.

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Good for Musk ..he has no weakness..he means it ..clearly stated … As much as I would like to see him owning Twitter …he’s got to stand up for himself! He just keeps getting better every day!

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May 17, 2022·edited May 17, 2022

It has long been known that YouTube tinkers with the upvote/downvote counts and then recently, for specious reasons, YouTube deleted the downvote count altogether and made it visible only to the owner of the video. Joe Biden used to get 90% downvotes, which takes some skill and then it was documented that the counts were changed in the blink of an eye by YouTube/Google. I remember just a few weeks before the 2020 election, I'd see a Biden video and it would have maybe 50% likes but when you read the comments, you'd have to scroll through hundreds of posts to find even one person that had something positive to say about Sleepy Creepy Joe Biden. Facebook has millions of fake accounts, which isn't necessarily FB's fault but it's a reality. I had a family member that had these products he sold on the internet and his FB campaign was made up of thousands of fake FB accounts that would like his product and they all looked real. Twitter is also part of this fake news media complex that props up Weekend-at-Bernie's candidates like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and squashes stories that outline voter fraud, vaccine deaths, the futility of masks, corruption at the CDC or Pfizer, or anything that goes against the left-wing narrative.

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Not only fake accts, but US gov owned bots?

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Management cooking the books a la Enron. Where is the board? This is called fraud.

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Discovery in this lawsuit will be lit.

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Inactive and duplicate accounts are probably 20% more…I’m sure they include my locked account in their numbers…

Unlike Netflix, @Twitter has hidden their subscriber loss through increasing BOT activity…

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Can't say I blame him. I know 5 people who created Twitter accounts to support Musk. How many more are there like that?

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I’ve never messed around much with Twitter, but the more their dirty laundry is exposed the better we all are for knowing. This can’t be good for the stock price!

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Musk is going to have big problems here. The 20% figure is nonsense. If you read the methodology behind that study it's complete garbage. Amongst other things they literally define active users as users who tweet - the majority of users who simply want to follow tweets don't exist at all, as far as those guys are concerned.

Basically all Twitter spambot research is pseudo-science of a quality that makes the average COVID study look like a pinnacle of rigorous truth seeking in comparison. If he gets into lawsuits where he tries to defend himself using those sorts of papers Twitter will demolish him in about five minutes flat.

A pity. I was looking forward to a Musk-run Twitter.

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If Twitter is just a mirage of fake accounts, then someone has been keeping them afloat. Who would trade a great deal of money to control speech?

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Musk is "outing" Twitter... good for him.

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Elon proved how far their Elongated pinocchio noses need to stretch. He's outing their ridiculous lies. Good.

Advertisers know.

The analysts know.

Twitter's board certainly Knows.

Twitter's employees certainly Know too.

And the best part....... class action lawyers Know.

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Check out @JustinTrudeau. Scroll past the blue checks and start looking at some of his 6.1M "followers". Joined May 2022 with 0 tweets. %20 bots might be even lower than Elon thinks.

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If Alex is correct we’re abot to see an Elongated trial that will be musk see court TV.

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Anybody who has followed Elon Musk for a while, knew this would happen. No surprise here.

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So Musk sues Twitter directors for attempted fraud.

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This entire saga is pretty fucking funny from where I sit.

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What boggles my mind is if they can’t manage 20% fake/spam accounts, but have time to remove people with credibility in what they share, like you Alex, what is that truly saying? Clearly they are motivated by something or outside forces to manage things a certain way! This kind of stuff is so frustrating!

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May 17, 2022·edited May 17, 2022

"while Twitter will sue to force him to close."

Good luck with what appears to be fraudulent public statements, SEC filings and management representations, Twitter's D&O's will have a bigger problem with shareholder suits. Twitter's audit firm may have a big problem too.

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I never understood Twitter’s business model. How do you generate revenue if > 25% of the activity comes from non-existent sources?

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interestingly the Tweeter "truth squad" did not ban the fake accounts.

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Can you say "Bait & Switch" boys and girls? I knew you could - Mr Rogers

Force them to reveal company crushing info with a buy offer? If so very well played Mr Musk, very well played indeed.

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Again Musk WINS in the court of Public opinion. The exposure is priceless

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TWTR-the-business: eliminate half your content because "insurrection", and then charge your actual customer-advertisers to show ads to a bunch of bots. Thanks for the reveal, Elon.

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Part of the game

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I have a question regarding these bots. I am not a tech nerd. Should they be viewed as AI? If so, then, is the promise of AI an empty one?

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Alex please get this story out. People need to be contacting their state reps. This is literally the most important story of the year. If you don’t want the WHO mandating vaccines for you and your family or calling the shots during the next health emergency people need to be contacting their state reps. https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-states-must-pre-emptively-nullify-any-who-international-pandemic-regulations

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Seems like 90+% of the responses to @pfizer tweets are making fun of Pfizer. Those are the real tweets. Not the ones posted by vaxbots, asking when they can get their 6 month olds shot up.

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Hmmm this Twitter buyout /fight and resulting scrutiny could bring surprising benefit

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This company is not worth $40+B. It was frothed up on market liquidity and artificially low interest rates. New times are coming. Musk is smart.

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I often characterize myself as "barely across the digital divide" and even I know that social media fully has the capability to verify whether users are real persons. Come on! This revelation about Twitter could be grounds for "no-brainer regulation" that Big Tech clean out its sites, one would hope.

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If they haven't already, they'll NDA Elon or his henchmen and show their work. Elon will then make a rational business decision. If their work supports their disclosures Elon will find a way to back down. If it doesn't, he'll press for a discount. Their private data supporting their claims will come out in any lawsuit to force Elon to close the deal or pay the break fee. If their reporting is optimistic but close to the "truth" reflected in their private data, it's in everyone's interest to knock a few bucks off the sales price and close the deal. If they've been completely lying to the SEC and public, maybe Elon ices the deal and hopes Parag gets hauled away in cuffs for investor fraud. Elizabeth Holmes.

Elon is too smart to allow a genuine misunderstanding to cause him to walk away from the deal, only to lose the break fee case in court when the judge and jury see the same private data he will see now.

This is just full-court-press public M&A. When no White Knight emerged during the bid process, it became clear to Elon that he had the whip hand. Now he's using his advantage to score a few bucks, rather than let it slip away unused.

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