[gnicholas]

It seems like he overlooks the possibility that the bot issue would turn up evidence that Twitter's executives knew that it wasn't quite following the described protocols.

But more generally, my point was that Musk could allege something that could create an MAE, and then the stock would drop and they'd end up arguing about whether the drop was due to the evidence, or due to the evidence's impact on people's belief that the deal would go through.

[fzzzy]

tptacek's point is that a MAE has nothing to do with the stock price, only revenue or profitability.

[leereeves]

If advertisers discovered that there are more bots on Twitter than they were told (and consequently that the audience of real humans is smaller than they were told) future revenue would probably decrease.

[gnicholas]

Sorry for not being clearer. I wasn't suggesting that the stock price dropping was an MAE. I was suggesting that the thing that caused the stock price to drop could arguably be an MAE. That's the whole point of my comment — there would be an argument about causation between the revelation/accusation, the stock price, and anticipated impact on revenue (as a sibling commenter pointed out).