Elon & Twitter

[Knightshade]

Ditto- none of the things the whistle is being blown on are actually relevant to the Musk deal far as I can tell (though I'm sure Elon will imagine they are since he seems to have some version of the deal in his head that isn't reflected in the actual agreement)

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The guy was fired in January before the merger agreement

Yeah and he only worked for Twitter for slightly over a year. Late 2020 to early 2022.

Buying opportunity? Haha

 

[Cosmacelf]

I agree, not likely material to the Elon lawsuit. Having said that I would be fascinated to hear if this guy has any real information about foreign government “interference” on Twitter. Because one form of this could indeed be hiring/enslaving tons of humans to post crap on Twitter to further a government narrative (China is good, for example). These aren’t “bots” but they would be invalid accounts for advertising purposes.

 

[kabin]

Ironic for Twitter management to point the finger of ineffective leadership and poor performance. I hope Musk cleans it out ASAP.

 

[JRP3]

I hope he can get out of the deal and buy back his TSLA shares.

 

[Knightshade]

Ditto- none of the things the whistle is being blown on are actually relevant to the Musk deal far as I can tell (though I'm sure Elon will imagine they are since he seems to have some version of the deal in his head that isn't reflected in the actual agreement)

Weird I got multiple disagrees with outright facts.

Matt Levine does a great job pointing out the whistle blower contradicts musks claims rather than supports them. Most relevant bits bolded.

And, to be clear, Zatko’s complaint doesn’t agree with Musk’s. The narrow issue in the Musk/Twitter dispute is whether Twitter has been lying in its securities filings when it says that it estimates that fewer than 5% of its “monetizable daily active users” are spam or bot accounts. And Zatko is pretty unambiguous that, no, Twitter’s numbers are correct. His lawyers write:

Executives are incentivized to avoid counting spam bots as mDAU, because mDAU is reported to advertisers, and advertisers use it to calculate the effectiveness of ads. If mDAU includes spam bots that do not click through ads to buy products, then advertisers conclude the ads are less effective, and might shift their ad spending away from Twitter to other platforms with higher perceived effectiveness.

However, there are many millions of active accounts that are not considered “mDAU,” either because they are spam bots, or because Twitter does not believe it can monetize them. These millions of non-mDAU accounts are part of the median user’s experience on the platform.

Musk’s claim is that Twitter counts spam bots in its mDAU numbers. Zatko’s complaint says, no, obviously Twitter doesn’t do that — that’s just a thing that Musk made up to get out of the deal

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Ouch, Elon mostly getting slapped down by the court (important to read the text to get a real sense of the judge’s thoughts). Three of five motions by Twitter were denied, but two of those were deferrals which they can renew at an appropriate time if obfuscation or stalling re-emerges. On the first denial (Twitter’s request was to waive all of Elon’s objections to discovery requests I think), the judge said that since Elon’s side had improved their “unreasonable opening stances” she is going to let this proceed for now in the normal fashion. Also denied was a request to produce communications with government entities but this is because Elon’s team hasn’t yet made an assertion of investigative privilege- if they do, then this will come up again. And the last one about rolling document production was denied; the judge thinks Elon is “working diligently” (I wonder if Elon is pulling all-nighters with his team of lawyers?) and will take his team at their word.

And the court is going to only “assume” that Elon has many friends. Haha.

Elon will have to identify all his family and friends who have relevant information, and information about his communications with co-investors as well.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1562109009129250817

 

[sids911]

Skeptical that this will be material. The guy was fired in January before the merger agreement. I wonder if the SEC complaint will be made public?

I wasn't aware Mudge was working for Twitter! And not just that - he was fired for "poor performance"!! seriously?? This guy is highly respected in CyberSecurity circles - original founder/ member of prolific l0pht and "THE" MUDGE was fired for poor performance!!!?? LOL Elon, stay the course I'd say now and clean up this mess!

Peiter Zatko - Wikipedia

 

[Daniel in SD]

I really don't understand this complaint. Why do users need some sort of quantification of spam prevalence? Obviously the average spam prevalence is irrelevant to users since the amount of spam varies widely depending on your Twitter bubble (crypto and TSLA seem much higher than average). Is Musk proposing some sort of personal spam exposure estimate? Why isn't each user's subjective experience of spam valid?
Anyway, I do really hope that Elon takes over because he certainly has a different perspective on managing a social media company. I want to see what will happen.
As a member of the public there are some private Tesla data and metrics I'd love to know way more than how many spam posts there are on Twitter...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1562135640598528000

 

[kabin]

Yeah and he only worked for Twitter for slightly over a year. Late 2020 to early 2022.

Buying opportunity? Haha

Apparently he's well known and respected in the cybersecurity industry.

 

[EVNow]

India forced Twitter to put agent on payroll, whistleblower says

Very shady given how Modi has tried to silence critics by imprisoning them for tweets.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/28/mohammed-zubair-arrest-twitter-alt-news/

Mohammed Zubair, a Muslim Indian journalist and prominent critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was arrested Monday over posts he made on Twitter, with press freedom groups swiftly condemning the charges.

India's government threatens to jail Twitter employees unless they block critics

India’s government has warned Twitter that it must obey its orders to remove “inflammatory content” or employees will face potential jail time.

www.engadget.com

ps: I should note if Modi asked Twitter to put a spy inside the company they should have gone to court. Ofcourse India still carries terrible British era censorship rules but courts usually don’t support their use to block political criticism.

 

[Daniel in SD]

India forced Twitter to put agent on payroll, whistleblower says

Very shady given how Modi has tried to silence critics by imprisoning them for tweets.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/28/mohammed-zubair-arrest-twitter-alt-news/

India's government threatens to jail Twitter employees unless they block critics

India’s government has warned Twitter that it must obey its orders to remove “inflammatory content” or employees will face potential jail time.

www.engadget.com

Super shady. Unfortunately it seems like this type of thing may get even worse under Musk.
"In 2021, India's information technology ministry imposed certain rules allowing the government to probe social media posts, demand identifying information, and prosecute companies that refused to comply. While Musk is a proponent of free speech, he believes that moderation on Twitter should "hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates"

 

[ggr]

Apparently he's well known and respected in the cybersecurity industry.

That's a drastic understatement of Mudge's reputation.

Peiter Zatko - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[EVNow]

Super shady. Unfortunately it seems like this type of thing may get even worse under Musk.
"In 2021, India's information technology ministry imposed certain rules allowing the government to probe social media posts, demand identifying information, and prosecute companies that refused to comply. While Musk is a proponent of free speech, he believes that moderation on Twitter should "hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates"

Not sure he wants to follow the rules in every country. Rules in EU and US are going to be different from that of China and Saudi Arabia.

BTW, that spy inside Twitter isn’t legal at all. Twitter would have to comply with subpoenas in India just like AT&T does in US. That’s not the issue - it’s crumbling to government pressure to do illegal stuff (which BTW, US telecom companies have done too).

NSA Spying

The US government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in massive, illegal dragnet surveillance of the domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001. Since this was first reported on by the...

www.eff.org

 

[Daniel in SD]

Not sure he wants to follow the rules in every country. Rules in EU and US are going to be different from that of China and Saudi Arabia.

BTW, that spy inside Twitter isn’t legal at all. Twitter would have to comply with subpoenas in India just like AT&T does in US. That’s not the issue - it’s crumbling to government pressure to do illegal stuff (which BTW, US telecom companies have done too).

NSA Spying

The US government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in massive, illegal dragnet surveillance of the domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001. Since this was first reported on by the...

www.eff.org

Well, Twitter claims that what the Indian government is doing is not legal and Musk says in his countersuit that it is and that Twitter should comply with Indian law.

 

[EVNow]

That's a drastic understatement of Mudge's reputation.

Peiter Zatko - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Not surprised that Twitter isn’t solid when it comes to security. Few companies are. With most of the companies you don’t want to know the real inside story. Personally I’d only trust companies like Google, MSFT, Apple.

 

[EVNow]

Well, Twitter claims that what the Indian government is doing is not legal and Musk says in his countersuit that it is and that Twitter should comply with Indian law.

Where ?

ps : Does Twitter say they have an Indian spy ?

 

[Daniel in SD]

Where ?

ps : Does Twitter say they have an Indian spy ?

His counterclaim to Twitter's lawsuit. https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/musk-counterclaim.pdf

"In 2021, India's information technology ministry imposed certain rules allowing the government to probe social media posts, demand identifying information, and prosecute companies that refused to comply. While Musk is a proponent of free speech, he believes that moderation on Twitter should "hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates"

I assume that they have spies if they're complying with Indian law:

In addition, the new rules required social media companies to employ executives based in India to ensure the companies complied with government requests to remove content and to block accounts. If those actions did not happen, the executives could be held criminally liable and could face jail terms of up to seven years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/05/business/twitter-india-lawsuit.html

 

[kabin]

That's a drastic understatement of Mudge's reputation.

Peiter Zatko - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Of course any unscrupulous company or management can play games with metrics to challenge one's reputation. On the other hand, he was a music major turned hacker so it's entirely possible he had some struggles in the Twitter leadership role. In any event, his government connections should, in the least, help open the lid on current TWTR 'leadership' shenanigans.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Of course any unscrupulous company or management can play games with metrics to challenge one's reputation. On the other hand, he was a music major turned hacker so it's entirely possible he had some struggles in the Twitter leadership role. In any event, his government connections should, in the least, help open the lid on current TWTR 'leadership' shenanigans.

I have no idea why people think the previous metric was better. I guess it was a larger number...