I imagine this hurts Twitter's defense against Musk from pulling out of the takeover deal, or, is this whistleblower's account inadmissible?
Not really because they have consistently said "this is what we do, it's a finger in the air estimate based on sampling, it might be right, it might be wildly wrong, there's no agreed methodology for this".
For someone to then go "they don't fully understand the true number of bots! GOTCHA!" is dumb because it's literally just pointing out exactly what they've said in their SEC filings since 2013.
I don't understand how you can look at his public behavior and think anything else. The only alternative is that he thought doing shitty things was a rational way to improve his situation, and I personally think that's a worse option
1. "Finger in the air estimate based on sampling", aka. "don't read too much into it"
2. "Not more than 5%"
3. "Methodology can't be understood externally"
Nobody said it was easy, but it's certainly harder if you don't try.
They've been filing their methodology for bot counting with the SEC since 2013.
If they're not making a "meaningful effort" and it materially affected the stock price in some way, either the SEC or a shareholder would have gone "HOLD ON SHENANIGANS O'CLOCK", surely?
It can't be that the entire world was A-OK with Twitter's bot counting until June 2022 when a man claiming to want to buy Twitter to fix the bot problem got cold feet on a market drop...
No, they haven’t. They describe at a very high level the amount of sampling they do (100 accounts a day? Really, that’s it?), but don’t discuss the methodology used, such as what they use as signals and indicators of botness. That’s not “filing their methodology“, it’s covering their arses.
Today's question on your statistics 101 exam:
You have a population of 100 million people. You estimate that the true probability of some statistic is about 5%. What sample size do you need to be 95% sure that you are within 5% of the correct answer? Answer: 73.
(No really, this kind of question is absolutely going to be in a Stats 101 class. And sample sizes really don't need to be that big to be accurate.)
True, but probably quite successful. So this will most likely not save Musk.
And to give Musk an out, which is what this tangent is about, not only do they need to have actually lied, the lies need to have had a VERY substantial effect on the price of the company.
The bot thing simply does not help Musk get out of the deal he's made. That is not the same thing as "Twitter are great at dealing with bots and have been very transparent about how they do it", but that's not the bar that has to be cleared here.
From a purely legal perspective, this really shouldn't matter much. As has been pointed out many times, Musk explicitly waived due diligence when he signed the contract. Also, it's still laughable to think that Musk's real reason for wanting to get out of the deal is the bot problem (instead of the obvious reason of the market tanking), when Musk himself made the argument that a big benefit of him buying Twitter is that he would be able to clean up the bot problem in the first place.
From the court-of-public-opinion, though, I think it does give Musk more leverage for a negotiated settlement to get out of the deal, which is really what he wants. I don't think Musk really thinks he can win in Delaware, but the longer he drags things out and the more pain he causes Twitter the more incentive they have to negotiate cancelling the deal.
However, there's enough here, provided by a highly-credible technical expert, and under consideration by the US Congress, that Musk's litigation team has a strong opportunity to find at least something that holds up as a material misrepresentation, even if relatively minor, and then link it to the broader effect of this document, which could very well rise to the level of a material adverse effect.
So, where bots are concerned, bad but not disastrous; for everything else -- well, let's just say that Musk's litigation team are burning incense to the gods this morning, while a whole bunch of Twitter execs are going to be spending the next few weeks getting grilled by their own retained counsel, at an even more exorbitant hourly rate than they were paying before.
>Musk lawyer Alex Spiro said they want to talk to Twitter whistleblower. “We have already issued a subpoena for Mr. Zatko, and we found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding.”
Mudge could be subpeonaed, just like Jack was just subpeonaed.
(That account tweets bloomberg alerts)