> If Musk’s team does a deeper dive than Twitter is willing to invest in and determines that the number of bots is material, it calls into question the entire financial model of Twitter. Customers will demand refunds and earnings will have to be restated going back years. It’s going to be a nuclear financial bomb.
This doesn't make sense. "Material" is a term of art defined with regard to the current deal, there's no such thing as determining "the number of bots is material" in a general sense such that customers (I presume you mean advertisers) would automatically be allowed to sue.
Sure, if Musk finds Twitter has historically lied that would be significant. But Twitter doesn't have a single "bot number". In specific circumstances they make specific calculations using defined procedures. For example, the number Musk is whining about uses active - not all - users as the denominator, so of course it's going to be lower than the "real" number of bots.
Surprisingly to me, so far Musk hasn't provided an argument beyond this same sort of word salad. Maybe he's playing n-dimensional chess, but if Twitter sues him he'll presumably have to make his real secret arguments in open court. We'll see then.
Of course it makes sense. “Material” is a financial term that is used all the time. It’s not a surprising term at all and fits here.
Twitter doesn’t have to be caught in a lie. They can just be caught with having a materially different numbers of fake accounts from their stated numbers.
If 25% of the amount you paid to Twitter for ads went to bots and fake accounts, you don’t think that you deserve a refund? You don’t think advertisers would take advantage of that to get refunds? You don’t think the SEC would be interested in this?
The whole point is Musk’s team is going to dig up stuff that Twitter won’t want to fix because the cost to find and track it will overweigh the amount of money they make probably. But it will have ramifications in terms of things like refunds and customers leaving the platform entirely. It will make them look really bad. It’s inevitable.
> “Material” is a financial term that is used all the time. It’s not a surprising term at all and fits here.
Yes, but it's only well-defined with regard to specific circumstances. It makes no sense to say something material to this deal will inherently be material to completely different circumstances like the contracts signed with advertisers or users.
No because that’s not how advertisers price ads. They measure an ROI on their spends and if it’s greater than 1, they’ll buy another set of ads. If the ROI is >1 with 25% bots on current Twitter, they should be worth much more to Musk Twitter because their current ads will outperform when musk enacts his magic bot preventers.
This doesn't make sense. "Material" is a term of art defined with regard to the current deal, there's no such thing as determining "the number of bots is material" in a general sense such that customers (I presume you mean advertisers) would automatically be allowed to sue.
Sure, if Musk finds Twitter has historically lied that would be significant. But Twitter doesn't have a single "bot number". In specific circumstances they make specific calculations using defined procedures. For example, the number Musk is whining about uses active - not all - users as the denominator, so of course it's going to be lower than the "real" number of bots.
Surprisingly to me, so far Musk hasn't provided an argument beyond this same sort of word salad. Maybe he's playing n-dimensional chess, but if Twitter sues him he'll presumably have to make his real secret arguments in open court. We'll see then.