[rybosworld]

It's odd to ask for citations then provide none for your own claims.

Regardless, I was referring to twitter whistle blower that confirmed the number of spam accounts is fabricated: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22186683-twitter-whi...

There is a LOT of fishy stuff in these documents. The twitter executives have committed fraud but it seems like they'll be getting away with it.

[aw1621107]

Can you point out where in the report it is claimed that the number of spam accounts is outright fabricated? The closest I can find is that Mudge accuses Twitter leadership of not knowing and/or not being interested in the total number of spam bots, but that is a very different accusation than fabricating the number of spam bots.

In addition, the number of spam bots is more or less a red herring - the only representation regarding bots that Twitter made during the acquisition was the false/spam/etc. rate among its mDAU. There was no representation made as to the total number of bots on Twitter, nor the percentage of all Twitter accounts which are bots.

That Musk focused on a different number is more or less entirely on him, and is a significant reason his lawsuit never really went anywhere.

It's also important to note that data scientists Musk hired failed to find evidence that supported his "wildly higher" claim - one firm found an 11% "fake user number" at an 80% confidence interval, while the other found a 5.3% spam accounts as a percentage of mDAU at a 90% confidence interval. Hardly the kind of evidence one would want to have when accusing Twitter of lying, let alone fraud.

[rybosworld]

Page 8 there’s an entire section dedicated to discussing bot accounts.

“The company could not even provide an accurate upper bound on the total number of spam bots on the platform. The site integrity team gave three reasons for this failure: (1) they did not know how to measure; (2) they were buried under constant firefighting and could not keep up with reacting to bots and other platform abuse; and, most troubling, (3) senior management had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bot accounts—because as Mudge later learned from a different sensitive source, they were concerned that if accurate measurements ever became public, it would harm the image and valuation of the company.”

[aw1621107]

Yes, that's the section I read. None of it supports a claim that bot numbers were fabricated.

The first and biggest problem is that the paragraph is talking about the total number of spam bots on Twitter, while the number that Twitter represented to Musk was the percentage of false/spam accounts as a percentage of mDAU. These are two different metrics and cannot be directly compared. Even if the paragraph directly accused Twitter of falsifying and/or fabricating the total number of spam bots on Twitter, it would have no relevance towards the merger since Twitter made no representations of the total number of spam bots on Twitter to Musk.

The second problem is that nothing in that paragraph implies fabrication - it's basically complaining that Twitter isn't paying attention to a metric Mudge thinks should be measured. "We don't know the answer and aren't interested in finding out" is not the same thing as "We don't know the answer and made something up instead".

The third problem is that Musk's own analysis failed to hint at fabrication as well - even if Mudge directly accused Twitter of fabrication, his claim was contradicted by other evidence.

[rybosworld]

> None of it supports a claim that bot numbers were fabricated

'In fact, Mudge learned deliberate ignorance was the norm amongst the executive leadership team. In early 2021, as a new executive, Mudge asked the Head of Site Integrity (responsible for addressing platform manipulation including spam and botnets), what the underlying spam bot numbers were. Their response was “we don't really know."'

If they don't know what the spam numbers are, then where is the 5% figure coming from?

I already quoted this part but this is also relevant: "The company could not even provide an accurate upper bound on the total number of spam bots on the platform."

They aren't able to provide an upper bound on the total number of spam accounts.

None of this is to due with the spam accounts that are known, and not counted as part of mDau. Those spam accounts are KNOWN, and not included in counts.

These documents are stating that twitter has no information on the actual total number of spam accounts.

[aw1621107]

> If they don't know what the spam numbers are, then where is the 5% figure coming from?

Again, that is 5% of mDAU, not 5% of accounts. Mudge is complaining about the latter, Twitter only represented the former.

In any case, Twitter's methodology to get the 5% figure, based on what was stated in court, appears to be:

1. Every day, have someone(s) randomly sample 100 users from the mDAU pool and use various pieces of data to try to determine which of those sampled accounts are spam/false accounts

2. At the end of the quarter, use the 90 samples to estimate the proportion of spam/false accounts among all mDAU users

This allows one to get a relatively tight estimate of the proportion of spam/false accounts among mDAU users without knowing the precise number of spam accounts among mDAU or the upper bound on the total number of spam accounts among all users on the platform. The former isn't known because of the statistical nature of the method, and the latter isn't known because the pool the samples are drawn from isn't the one needed to determine the total number of bots.

> None of this is to due with the spam accounts that are known, and not counted as part of mDau. Those spam accounts are KNOWN, and not included in counts.

Non-mDAU users consist of more than just spam accounts, though - for example, inactive users and users using non-monetizable clients are excluded. If the precise makeup of the pool of non-mDAU users is not known, then that would easily explain not knowing the upper bound on spam accounts.

Strictly speaking, one can trivially provide an upper bound on the number of spam accounts - just give the total number of accounts - but that's hardly a useful answer. Presumably Mudge wanted something with more precision, and if that information is not tracked than Twitter obviously wouldn't be able to give a useful answer, no deception needed.

> These documents are stating that twitter has no information on the actual total number of spam accounts.

But it doesn't state that Twitter fabricated the total number of spam accounts, does it?

And once again, the total number of spam bots is irrelevant to Musk's purchase. Twitter made no representations regarding such a statistic in its SEC filings or in the merger agreement, so there can be no fraud or falsification regarding that statistic. The only statistic Twitter provided regarding bots was the 5% number, and that was bots as a percentage of mDAU, which is different from the statistic Mudge was complaining about.

[jcranmer]

> If they don't know what the spam numbers are, then where is the 5% figure coming from?

It's 5% of mDAU.

[jcranmer]

Actually, from what I recall of Mudge's claims, it basically validates Twitter's mDAU metric. Mudge's complaint boils down to he thinks the mDAU metric is the wrong thing to measure in large part because it focuses too much on measuring value for advertisers rather than the health of the platform.

[rybosworld]

Page 8 of the report contradicts what you are saying.

[jcranmer]

No it doesn't. Scroll to the very next page, and especially read paragraphs 15 and 16.

[rybosworld]

Those paragraphs are discussing that there are a number of KNOWN fake accounts that are not included in mDAU.

The very next paragraphs state that they have no idea just how many total fake accounts there are. That is, there is a number of fake accounts that they don't know about (and don't make any effort to count), and they are concerned that counting them will affect stock price.

Said another way, they are admitting they aren't counting all the fake accounts. That's in paragraphs 17 & 18

[jcranmer]

The relevant financial representations have always been about the mDAU numbers. It's Musk who is trying to pretend that the "5% of mDAU may be spam account" really meant "5% of all accounts are spam accounts."

Mudge isn't saying that Twitter's statements about mDAU are wrong; he's saying that he thinks it's a bad metric, because mDAU ignores the effect of fake accounts. Even if Mudge is correct in his assessment that mDAU is a bad metric, it does not sustain any allegations of fraud.

[rybosworld]

> Mudge isn't saying that Twitter's statements about mDAU are wrong;

He literally did say that. I get the sense you're not reading the whistleblower docs... Or just arguing for the sake of arguing. I've quoted Mudge. Whereas you are inferring things based on what Musk said.

I've already linked the docs so I won't again. I've pointed out where this information can be found. Those documents are in no uncertain terms stating that Twitter does not have a grasp of how many fake accounts there are. Therefore, any number they give is wrong.