Twitter Stock Plunges 21 Percent After Earnings Show Effects of Fake-Account Purge (marketwatch.com) 126
Twitter shares fell 21% on Friday as the company reported that user growth had turned negative, even as its quarterly results beat Wall Street expectations. The decline was even greater than Facebook's almost 19 percent plunge in shares after the social media giant reported disappointing results. MarketWatch reports: Twitter posted a profit for the third consecutive quarter, with its $134 million in net income equating to 13 cents a share. Adjusted per-share earnings came to 17 cents. The FactSet consensus estimate had been 16 cents. Twitter's revenue climbed 24% to $710.5 million to beat the FactSet consensus estimate by about $2 million. Even as executives talked about Twitter's bright future on the earnings calls, investors appeared to react to Twitter's slowing user growth, as its monthly user count went south, falling by 1 million to 355 million, as compared with the year's first quarter. The decline was expected after recent reports had the company purging about a million fake accounts a day.
Meh (Score:1)
I called this. (Score:2)
Anyone remember when I said they were at least 30% bots and when the world finds out the shareholders all take a bath?
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No, not quite what I was saying, but I like the dramatic flair your version adds.
It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
Using Twitter is like playing Russian Roulette. Every time you tweet, you pull the trigger. Most of the time, nothing happens, but sooner or later you'll get unlucky and the Internet mob will destroy you for what you tweeted (latest case in point: James Gunn).
Maybe, just maybe, people are finally beginning to realize just how toxic Twitter really is. It only took a few thousand ruined lives and careers to get the point across.
Just so we're clear (Score:5, Insightful)
> Using Twitter is like playing Russian Roulette. Every time you tweet, you pull the trigger.
> case in point: James Gunn
So what you're saying is every time you talk, things like this might spill out of your mouth?:
"I like when little boys touch me in my silly place."
-- James Gunn
"The best thing about being raped is when youâ(TM)re done being raped and itâ(TM)s like 'whew this feels great, not being raped!'"
-- James Gunn
"walked over a table to one of the kid actors on set, looked at the kid, and started masturbating right at him. ... A string of semen shot out of the mini-monkey-wood and splash-landed DIRECTLY ON THE KID.
Screaming and freaking out commenced.
I know it might be sick, but that story makes me extremely happy."
-- James Gunn
"Watching Trapped in the Closet, R Kellyâ(TM)s second best video after the one where he urinates on a child.â
-- James Gunn
If these are the kinds of things you might randomly say, your Russian roulette, please - get help.
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* - Has 'stick up your ass' now morphed into a lynchable offense?**
** - Oh shit has that?
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If these are the kinds of things you might randomly say, your Russian roulette, please - get help.
This is the kind of thing someone would say not at all understanding the entertainment industry or the human brain. But let's point out two things in isolation:
a) James Gunn was a filmmaker whose art 10+ years ago relied heavily on shock humour. To get recognised you need to make your mark in people's minds. Blow their minds, shock their minds, make them think you're incredibly stupid, whatever. You need to do something that gets you noticed and usually that something will be in line with your general artis
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> People develop, people change. Maybe he did get help?
Maybe he did, and refused to acknowledge that to Disney executives. Or maybe his interest in child molestation has developed in the way things normally develop. In general, things tend to develop further, whatever something does, it tends to develop to do more so. Small trees become larger trees, they don't generally become carrots. A leaning fence tends tends to lean further until it falls, it doesn't tend to right itself.
I'm not going to put him in
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No, that's you projecting that because I pointed out that James Gunn destroyed his life and career by using Twitter, that somehow I am okay with pedophilia and rape. That says a great deal more about you than it does about me, or James Gunn.
What Gunn tweeted years ago was tasteless, provocative shock humor (to him, at least). But because he used Twitter to do it, and he put it out for the world to see, and because
Feel free to hire him (Score:2)
You're free to hire him to run your projects, directing your people.
As for me, I won't be putting someone who constantly talks about the joy of child molestation in charge of *my* people. O care enough about the people in my sphere of influence that I wouldn't subject them to whatever this sicko may do next. You can, though. Do expect to be sued when he continues to be a sick bastard, because you knew about it when you hired him and put him in a position to hurt others.
Twitter can be safe (Score:3)
I have a Twitter account where I just post technical info, zero politics. I don't follow political people and even some technical people I follow I have to mute from time to time.
It is possible to run a Twitter account that is pure utility and friendly vibes, where there's really nothing that anyone can gain much traction on.
Mobs on Twitter are inherently a stupid thing anyway. You can just take a break from Twitter and most of the people will be gone, blocking the handful of losers that remain. Then jus
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One of the companies I worked for a few years ago did something similar to this. Guess what happened? That mob you're talking about, they went out of their way to get the guy who operated it fired because he refused to play the political game and simply muted them.
Seriously, Twitter is the equivalent of pig sty loaded with ebola and leprosy. If someone is so determined to ruin your life, the little self-offend-o-trons will go out of their way to try and ruin it. It's simply easier on twitter because comp
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I started keeping a personal data retention rule on Twitter for this reason. 2 years—that's the maximum length of lifetime I am willing to allow on my tweets. Every New Year's, I'll delete every tweet that is more than 1 year old. I am willing to be held responsible for what I tweeted in the last year. But if somebody wants to dig up older tweets, they're going to have to maintain their own archive.
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Dude, I'm sure all tweets are archived by some bot somewhere. People get in deep shit for deleted tweets all the time. Unless you're retired or independently wealthy, using twitter is insanity. Every tweet risks your solvency.
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Tweeting is like speeding. The first step in defense is obscurity. The second step in defense is not being so obvious about it.
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You reap what you sow. Twitter used to be what it truly is... a place full of irrelevant bullshit that you can have fun in.
Then the Left arrived
Politicised it
Took it over
Twitter, being full of smug and self-satisfied liberals, didn't care. Proclaimed itself the free speech wing of the free speech party - while ignoring the rancid outrage mobs that were developing on their platform. There people were determined to ruin the lives of anyone they disagreed with and could find their real identities.
Then... the s
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Fantasy cage match: Network Effects v Market Cap (Score:4, Interesting)
What's interesting me about this news, also extended to Facebook, is the interplay between the corporate value that's actually based on network effects versus the delusional stock prices that drive the market cap. To review, the idea of network effects is that more users of the network increase the value of the network, often more than linearly. However, what happens when lots of the users become fake identities that are not actually contributing any real value? The tiny bit of the stock price that is related to actual value (rather than gambling machines battling to the death) is going to have to adjust when the network appears to shrink.
From a fundamental level (as if anyone cared anymore relative to technical speculation), I don't see any value in Twitter from the git go.
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Nitpick, it must be more than linear. But yes, exponential increases are usually considered. To those who wonder why Microsoft is still so valuable, it's network effects. And there, unlike social media, the costs to getting everyone to switch are almost impossible.
I could see some value in Twitter, but I couldn't (and still don't) see a way for them to retain any of that v
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Er... Just so, and thanks for pointing out my mistake. Would you believe that some of my best friends are real mathematicians.
However, as it applies to the story, the question is how much the stock price should fluctuate in response to shrinkage of the network when fake identities are removed. If the opinion of the correct stock price was based on the imagined value of a network of 100 million identities, and you remove 20 million fake identities, then what is the new imaginary stock price?
My main point sho
Translation of Wall Street (Score:1)
We would rather have lies of large numbers that look good on the surface than evidence of truthful and honest conduct to rehabilitate falsehoods.
Tweet Attacks (Score:1)
Good keep going (Score:3)
It does nothing positive for society.
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society itself is pretty shitty, so meh
And this is the result of so-called "investment" (Score:5, Informative)
What we have is irresponsible profit-driven reporters who want short clips rather than explaining what this actually means.
And in the mean time, we have a bunch of idiots who are so absorbed with another idiots that all they want to do is talk politics and trash talk eachother.
This easily could have been titled "Childish investors with no foresight have knee-jerk reaction to something that was already predicted." Or perhaps "Company does the right thing, angers investors."
Stock price no longer has any real tie in with the success or failure of companies. It's just a ticker number that people who participate in real-life gambling pay attention to.
Just wait for Tesla (Score:1)
When I saw the massive $FB drop (which seemed unwarranted, IMO) it was clear a lot of future growth was baked in. Same with twitter. Tesla has their earnings call Wednesday. They're a $50-60 billion dollar company - bigger than Ford, sometimes bigger than GM. I don't know what's been baked in [1], but they look more like a $5 billion dollar company. And act like a $5 million dollar company. Expect them to pop big time.
1. Tesla hypesters insist they're also an energy company. Look at the P/E for Solar
I'm not sure why this comes as a surprise ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Twitter had an exaggerated user base which inflated stock because more users = great company.
Twitter wipes out a significant amount of fake accounts and the stock plummets.
( Company not quite as amazing as they pretended it was )
Pretty sure that's how this is supposed to work ?
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Hmmm (Score:2)
Does that make it "real fake news?"
Purge was a bag idea (Score:2)
From what I've seen, a lot of the bots were way more valuable than most people on Twitter.
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More likely its recent revealation's of "shadow banning".
There's nothing "recent" about twitter's "shadow bans", they've been well known for a long while now.
Freedom is unique (Score:1)
Any 3rd world nation can report, ban, block, shadow ban, censor.
Bring back some US free speech and make the internet great again.
Only 1 million fake accounts? (Score:1)
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If you read carefully you will see that it's one million per day.
The real story is that even when purging a million accounts per day, their total user base only declined by 1 million this month.
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every time you delete 1 bot, 10 more are created.
Re:The election brought in a ton of money (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you saying the media was easy on Trump? You are delusional.
I wonder if the media are ready to call out these folks?;
Obama’s chief economist: Trump’s economic projections are “the most absurd I’ve ever seen” He predicts huge growth rates, of 3 percent a year, without explaining how he’d get there.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/19/17012288/trump-budget-proposal-obama-chief-economist-jason-furman-interview
Obama: Trump lacks ‘magic wand’ to grow economy. “He just says, ‘I’m gonna negotiate a better deal.’ Well how? How exactly are you going to negotiate that?”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-president-obamas-town-hall-in-elkhart-indiana
Team Obama: Sorry, America, the ‘new normal’ may be here to stay
"The good times may be over for good. In a speech to the Economic Club of New York yesterday, US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said the US GDP growth rate, adjusted for inflation, is now projected to run a little above 2% a year."
http://www.aei.org/publication/team-obama-sorry-america-the-new-normal-may-be-here-to-stay/
If Trump thinks he can get more than 3% economic growth, he's dreaming
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-3percent-20170519-story.html
Then there are the nonpolitical observers, such as bond guru Bill Gross, who says: "High rates of growth, and the productivity that drives it, are likely distant memories from a bygone era." And academic economists such as Northwestern's Robert J. Gordon, who states bluntly in his pessimistic book "The Rise and Fall of American Growth" that U.S. GDP's best years are behind it.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-3percent-20170519-story.html
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Obama’s chief economist: Trump’s economic projections are “the most absurd I’ve ever seen” He predicts huge growth rates, of 3 percent a year, without explaining how he’d get there.
They were absurd because he was also promising to eliminate the federal debt in 8 years.
Now we know how he wants to get those growth rates, massive borrowing, massive deficits.
Re:With the exception of the LA Times (Score:4, Interesting)
During the primaries all the left wing msm went easy on him and treated him with kid gloves. The moment he won the primaries the MSM barring Fox news completely flipped the script.
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During the primaries all the left wing msm went easy on him and treated him with kid gloves. The moment he won the primaries the MSM barring Fox news completely flipped the script.
During the election CNN tripped over themselves to give Trump air time. The one that stands out was when they all, CNN included ignored a Hillary Clinton speech to show an empty podium while they were waiting for Trump. link [politicususa.com]
Trump was good for ratings. Unfortunately ratings is a shitty way to elect a president.
Most didn't take Trump seriously early on, since they though for sure he would implode at any time, but he never did. Cruz in particular seemed to be positioning himself to take Trump's voters when
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I can't speak about local stations, but CNN, MSNBC and Fox News (apart from Chris Tucker and Sean Hannity) have been absolutely hell bent on painting the most negative picture possible of Trump and his supporters. For two years straight. As have basically every late night comedy/talk show, SNL, and most big online news sites.
Stop smoking crack.
Re:With the exception of the LA Times (Score:4, Insightful)
Fox News: "Now this is an amazing thing people, with its beautiful deep browns and rich filling aroma. And they've done such an amazing job with the lighting. We're witnessing something amazing here."
CNN: "Folks, this is a pile of fecal matter. It looks and smells terrible, and isn't really a great thing."
The Right: "Fake News!! Look at how biased CNN is, typical leftist media lies trying to make it look bad!!"
There's a simple reason mainstream media outside of Fox almost always portrays Trump negatively: Because what he is saying and doing are actually terrible things. It isn't bias to call a turd a turd just because the other side is hell bent on trying to distort reality by insisting it's something wonderful.
The right has an obsessive, pervasive campaign to try to turn outlets that lean a little to the left, and like everyone from time to time make an error, into incessantly lying intentional extreme-left propaganda outlets, and it's working beyond what they could have hoped for. Not only have they hoodwinked the entire right wing, even some left leaning moderates are buying into it. Meanwhile, Fox News is almost as bad as North Korea's state TV with distortion and leader-worship. On a bias scale of 1-10, CNN is a 2, MSNBC a 3, and Fox News a 9.
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It isn't bias to call a turd a turd just because the other side is hell bent on trying to distort reality
Yet its not ok to assume someone is a man because he was born with a cock and decided to chop it off.
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so youre saying
black male in mens bathroom = good
black male in womens bathroom = bad, unless they "claim" to identify as a woman?
I feel the first is fine, wtf do I care what color someones skin is, I care if they're a piece of shit or not. I however completely disagree with "If they 'bother' other people in the bathroom with their presence, well their right to be in there supersedes your discomfort of having them there"
You claim to be no friend of SJW's, yet you are one.
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Oh you're one of those bathroom morons.
By insisting that people stick to the bathroom of their birth gender, you're insisting this dude use women's bathrooms:
https://www.advocate.com/sites... [advocate.com]
Why DO you want burly bearded men in women's bathrooms? Wanna go there yourself or something?
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No im fine with using the bathroom im supposed to use. the one with urinals. and yes im one of those "bathroom" morons. gender is not fucking baskin robins. wtf is wrong with you people. But we already know where you stand, on the left, insulting, instigating, and harassing others.
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Why do you want the dude in that picture in womens bathrooms?
Either answer the question or you concede that your point is absurd.
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Yes spin this to try to make me out to be the weirdo. fuck off with your nonsense. Men are born Men Women are born Women, They should use the appropriate bathroom. you know this you just want to be a pedantic cunt.
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Yes spin this to try to make me out to be the weirdo. fuck off with your nonsense
Then tell me why you want that burly bearded dude in the ladies toilets.
It's a simple question.
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Also, answer the other guys question. Transmen a
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So because YOU don't care about skin color, that can't be used to discriminate, but because YOU personally do care about what's inside someones underwear, that can?
I stopped reading there, and dont care to finish. youre just trying to bait some bullshit. I care about what is inside of somebodys head. You know that mushy grey matter. I care that somebody with enough mental issues to mutilate their reproductive organs may be in a bathroom with a kid of opposing gender, imagine what that would do to a child that doesnt understand this shit yet? so now that I think about it, with your negative spin on everything.. now I think they should be required to use their own bath
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Then you say you care about men in the women's room, fully ignoring the issue of transmen, which makes it easier, not harder, for normal men to be in there.
I dont understand what you mean there. please elaborate(sorry no college education). as for the "crying bait" I call it how i see it. I said nothing about skin color, or race, you did. I call shit how I see it and it looks like you're trying to race bait. I don't play those bullshit games, where I was raised it wasn't possible to be racist.
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lol you people are fucked in the head. im over it. call em whatever you will. i said what i said and your "but hir" wont change my mind.
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Cleverness aside, what you fail to understand is this: "Because what he is saying and doing are actually terrible things." (Emphasis added.) *You* think the reality is those are terrible things, and roughly 40% of the rest population does. Another 40% of the population believes those are not at all terrible things, to say the least. There is no consensus on which version of the two realities is "true." The only reason why someone might believe that your estimation is superior to that of the rest is if you h
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Re:The election brought in a ton of money (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do you get your weed man? I need some of that.
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good try but im high not stupid :)
Just to be clear (Score:5, Interesting)
I honestly think one of the main reasons Trump won was the media's refusal to call him out on obvious lies and his shady business record. And that refusal was fueled by a desire to see a horse race and to suck up all those ad buys. Trump should never have been a serious candidate. He refused to release his tax returns, has a string of failed businesses and a court case where he admitted under oath his net worth isn't near what he claims and a long history of extra-marital affairs of the sort that don't go down well with the base he was trying to appeal to. That baggage should have wrecked him. But the media continually went easy on him even as they piled on Hillary.
Of course if they'd buried Trump in his own bad press early on folks would have stopped paying attention and the guys bank rolling his campaign would stop; meaning no more free eyeballs and no more free ad money. Trump got something like a billion in free coverage most of it positive. But then again if the media was doing it's job we'd be calling Bernie Mr President.
Okay, just so I'm clear here.
You think the media *wasn't* incessantly harsh on Trump in the run-up to the election.
You think most of the media coverage was positive.
I am at a loss as to how, exactly, the media could have been more harsh...
Re: Just to be clear (Score:2)
They mostly just let him talk (Score:2, Informative)
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This from the complete dipshit that told me the DNC rigging their election is perfectly fine and a good thing.
The same guy who said Clinton taking $150 million in bribes from RUSSIA to set State Dept policy is acceptable.
Sorry, you jumped the shark. Your posts on politics are worthless.
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Their failure to actually press him on his obvious crimes, adultery, and just about half his actual record is remarkable only in it's consistent depth. They pulled every punch possible, because it was good for ratings. As bad as you think he is, it's actually 10x worse.
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Then you haven't paid attention. There is a way stories are presented so people don't dwell and a way they are presented so they stick. The stories were presented in as light and non damaging a way as possible. I think much of this is because Clinton's campaigners were unbearable. Many may hate Trump's persona and cruel nature but much of his politics when compared to Hillary and the Dem direction is actually closer to old liberalism such as Bill Clinton's than Hillary's politics of radical victimhood vs ev
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Okay, just so I'm clear here.
You think the media *wasn't* incessantly harsh on Trump in the run-up to the election.
You think most of the media coverage was positive.
I am at a loss as to how, exactly, the media could have been more harsh...
They could have focused.
I do think the media was a lot harder on Clinton, though I don't think it was by design.
The way scandals work is you either need a good answer or need to wait until a new story comes up.
For Clinton there was basically just one scandal, the emails, notably her choice to exempt herself from the rules and then the admin's choice to purge the server after the subpoena came in.
She didn't have a great answer for either of those but it probably should have only been a moderate sized scandal
Re:The election brought in a ton of money (Score:4, Interesting)
Not disagreeing with you at all.
Trump would have won.
People wanted change.
Hillary self-identified as Obama 2.0.
The Democratic party rigged their whole primary process. Bernie was not supposed to be there to dilute the vote.
Clinton had too much baggage and Sanders was too radical to the left.
Trump promised whatever it was that his immediate rally-goers needed to survive.
Back to your point:
Businesses don't care about anything except money.
America is not a Republic or a democracy.
It's a Capitalistic society.
I don't think they do (Score:2)
And you're right about us not being a Democracy, we're an oligarchy.
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Trump lost the popular vote by far, far more than any previous electoral college winner, and won a whole slew of states by razor thin margins in an amazingly statistically improbable event. Either it was a ton of luck or it was carefully targeted regional vote manipulation by a certain foreign country known to have purchased carefully targeted ads designed to trick voters with lies.
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The popular vote doesn't count [factcheck.org] and the American voters know that.
Q: How many times was a president elected who did not win the popular vote?
A: It has happened five times.
Russia did not throw the vote.
Let's face it, OK?: The 2016 election cycle was totally bizarre in that all three top contenders were toxic.
Had either Bernie or Hillary won, things would still be batshit crazy.
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> I honestly think one of the main reasons Trump won was the media's refusal to call him out
As many republicans voted for Trump as they voted for previous republican presidents. Trump won because less democrats turned out than they did for Obama. And can you blame democrats them after what Hillary's followers did to Bernie Sanders?