Former Disney CEO Says Company Found a 'Substantial Portion' of Twitter Users Were Not Real When It Evaluated Acquisition in 2016 (vox.com) 81
Bob Iger, former Disney CEO, explained on Wednesday why Disney didn't acquire Twitter in 2016. He said: "We enter the process immediately, looking at Twitter as the solution: a global distribution platform. It was viewed as sort of a social network. We were viewing it as something completely different. We could put news, sports, entertainment, [and] reach the world. And frankly, it would have been a phenomenal solution, distribution-wise. Then, after we sold the whole concept to the Disney board and the Twitter board, and we're really ready to execute -- the negotiation was just about done -- I went home, contemplated it for a weekend, and thought, 'I'm not looking at this as carefully as I need to look at it.' Yes, it's a great solution from a distribution perspective. But it would come with so many other challenges and complexities that as a manager of a great global brand, I was not prepared to take on a major distraction and having to manage circumstances that weren't even close to anything that we had faced before. Interestingly enough, because I read the news these days, we did look very carefully at all of the Twitter users -- I guess they're called users? -- and we at that point estimated with some of Twitter's help that a substantial portion -- not a majority -- were not real. I don't remember the number but we discounted the value heavily. But that was built into our economics. Actually, the deal that we had was pretty cheap."
What? (Score:1)
I wonder what he thought he was buying? (Score:3)
We could put news, sports, entertainment, [and] reach the world. And frankly, it would have been a phenomenal solution, distribution-wise.
Maybe he's thinking of some other Twitter.
No, wait, I just checked. Bob Iger's 71 and has no clue what's happening anymore.
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> Bob Iger's 71 and has no clue what's happening anymore.
we did look very carefully at all of the Twitter users -- I guess they're called users?
I suspect he's right but I sure wouldn't count on him being right about anything. Except paying lawyers to make Harvey Weinstein's victims go quiet, maybe.
Miramax!
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Yes, it's a great solution from a distribution perspective.
was the other bit that made me laugh, because Twitter is not that.
He knew better than to buy Twitter (Score:2)
Re: He knew better than to buy Twitter (Score:2)
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We could put news, sports, entertainment, [and] reach the world. And frankly, it would have been a phenomenal solution, distribution-wise.
Maybe he's thinking of some other Twitter. No, wait, I just checked. Bob Iger's 71 and has no clue what's happening anymore.
Maybe he's think of something like cable channels. If those existed, maybe Disney could have their own, and several for sports, etc... Maybe they could even force providers to carry (pay for) all of them if they wanted to carry the main channel. Oh, wait...
They're called "Bots". (Score:2)
>> we did look very carefully at all of the Twitter users -- I guess they're called users?
They're called "Bots".
Human or not.
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I prefer "Twits". Twits on Twitter. For bonus fun, (mentally) say it like Elmer Fudd would.
For a similar reason, I don't call it "Twitter" - I refer to it as "Twatter".
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I am unsure, there are a lot of really dumb and gullible people out there. I have came across people in real life (often from an under educated background) Who's speech and beliefs often seem very close to what the bots may generate. They are so sadly attracted to the news rags that align with their political stances (or other interests as well), that it is all they talk about, and will get angry when an attempt to moderate their ideas or add nuance to the more complicated situation then they may assume, a
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Bob Iger's 71 and has no clue what's happening anymore.
"I remember when I was 71. I was a lot younger then, still driving an 18 wheeler and marching with Nelson Mandela in Selma" - Joe Biden
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No, wait, I just checked. Bob Iger's 71 and has no clue what's happening anymore.
Obligatory: It's a series of tubes [youtube.com]
Uh ohh, Elon will want to know (Score:2)
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In other words, if Twitter starts killing people we can execute it?
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from being a cautionary tale about why you don't sign away your due diligence rights, or negotiate a deal during a multi-day bender, what exactly is the point of this story?
Re: And? (Score:1, Insightful)
Twitter is a traded company, they have to disclose these facts. They have been publicly underplaying the share of bots on their platform and this is now the third person that confirmed it. The SEC should investigate and get massive fines and lawsuits going for cheating on their reports. This is basically the equivalent to Enron.
Re: And? (Score:5, Informative)
Twitter is a traded company, they have to disclose these facts.
No.
They have been publicly underplaying the share of bots on their platform and this is now the third person that confirmed it. The SEC should investigate and get massive fines and lawsuits going for cheating on their reports. This is basically the equivalent to Enron.
Se above.
The 5% figure is from their form 10-k, "risk factors" and If you haven't read the actual paragraph it's on page 24 https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfr... [cloudfront.net] . If you looked at later filings I'm sure you'd find things like covid and higher energy prices in similarly vague language and I encourage you to just quickly browse the full document to get a feel for the language the SEC is perfectly happy with (and if you believe twitter is an anomaly, just pick any large publicly traded companys form 10-k).
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The crux of the issue is that Twitter reports 5% of it's users are bots. Musk backed out because he said that isn't true and there's no way to confirm that information. Iger is claiming the same; he said not a majority but a substantial portion were fake.
So the issue here is if Twitter is reporting 5% in their 10-ks when it's wrong; if it's 10% then they've mislead investors by understating the risk factors.
Honestly, I don't know why we're all debating this. Twitter is no lo
Re: And? (Score:5, Informative)
Twitter claimed that ~5% of the accounts that advertisers are targeting with their ads are bots, mDAUs (monetizable daily active users), not that only ~5% of all accounts on the entire platform are bots. To the best of my knowledge they've never made any claims as to the total number of bot accounts on the platform. Musk has deliberately tried to conflate the two since he seems to have confused the court of public opinion with a court of law. He'll win in the former, but the latter will just say, "LOL! No" and it's only the latter that will decide if he's on the hook for $44bn.
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Incorrect.
Twitter makes a claim on the "monetizable daily users". It estimates that 5% of these may be bots.
Twitter has never claimed 5% of its users are bots.
If you want users, let's say Twitter has 100,000,000 users. It's monetizable users, which is cons
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No (and it's the framing of the question that's all wrong).
Context matters. What they have to disclose on their form 10-k are risk factor to their business and under that headline is the paragraph wherein you find the 5% figure. Read it in full and keep context in mind; I don't see how they have to prove their 5% and the bar is much higher than coming up with a different metric/figure to prove them wrong.
We rely on assumptions and estimates to calculate certain of our key metrics, and real or perceived inaccuracies in such metrics may harm our
reputation and negatively affect our business.
We calculate our mDAU using internal company data that has not been independently verified. While these numbers are based on what we believe
to be reasonable calculations for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring mDAU and mDAU engagement. For
example, there are a number of false or spam accounts in existence on our platform. We estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the fourth
quarter of 2019 continued to represent fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter. However, this estimate is based on an internal review of a sample of
accounts and we apply significant judgment in making this determination. As such, our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the
actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have currently estimated. We are continually seeking
to improve our ability to estimate the total number of spam accounts and eliminate them from the calculation of our mDAU, but we otherwise treat multiple
accounts held by a single person or organization as multiple accounts for purposes of calculating our mDAU because we permit people and organizations to
have more than one account. Additionally, some accounts used by organizations are used by many people within the organization. As such, the calculations of
our mDAU may not accurately reflect the actual number of people or organizations using our platform. We regularly review and may adjust our processes for
calculating our internal metrics to improve their accuracy. Our measures of mDAU growth and engagement may differ from estimates published by third parties
or from similarly-titled metrics of our competitors due to differences in methodology. If advertisers, content or platform partners or investors do not perceive our
metrics to be accurate representations of our total accounts or mDAU engagement, or if we discover material inaccuracies in our metrics, our reputation may be
harmed and content partners, advertisers and platform partners may be less willing to allocate their budgets or resources to our products and services, which
could negatively affect our business and operating results. Further, as our business develops, we may revise or cease reporting metrics if we determine that
such metrics are no longer accurate or appropriate measures of our performance. For example, we believe that mDAU, and its related growth, are the best ways
to measure our success against our objectives and to show the size of our audience and engagement going forward, so we discontinued disclosing monthly
active usage after the first quarter of 2019. If investors, analysts or customers do not believe our reported measures, such as mDAU, are sufficient or accurately
reflect our business, we may receive negative publicity and our operating results may be adversely impacted.
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If you want users, let's say Twitter has 100,000,000 users. It's monetizable users, which is considered how many of those will respond to ads, is say, 100,000. The 5% figure is off that, which means Twitter claims that at least 95,000 users are real users.
All Twitter has to show is that there are at least the number of accounts (minus 5%) are real accounts and "monetizable", whatever that means. Using the fake numbers, they need to show out of 100M accounts, they can find 95 (or 95,000) real accounts that meet whatever they define as "monetizable".
You gave a definition, and then contradict yourself by retracting your definition -- which equates to retracting literally EVERYTHING you just argued for.
Regardless of whether monetizable users refers to registered app users, anonymous scrollers, notifications recipients, paid subscribers (content creators, content consumers, and advertisers), or automated systems (bots of various types)... Twitter themselves only gave themselves little wiggle room (claiming ~95% are non-bots). Any variance within +/- 10
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This is another credible witness Musk could potentially call to compel further discovery. A judge and jury will listen hard to what Bob Iger has to say about why he walked away from the Twitter shit show.
Re: And? (Score:2)
Actually, he's more of a witness for Twitter's side of the story:
"we ... estimated with some of Twitter's help that a substantial portion -- not a majority -- were not real. I don't remember the number but we discounted the value heavily. But that was built into our economics."
So, in other words, Disney did the due dilligence and priced it into their offer, whereas Musk just made a wild offer without doing the background work and wants to back-peddle now he has belatedly found out the same information.
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Not really. First up, Musk has been deliberately trying to conflate total number of bots with mDAUs (see above for definition). Twitter only claims that ~5% of its mDAUs are bots, not that the platform itself is only ~5% bots. That argument may work in the court of public opinion, but it's absolutely doomed to fail in a court of law. Second, Musk signed away his due diligence rights, where he could have gone over every facet of Twitter's operations, decided something didn't seem right, and walk away from th
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There's a difference between Musk not asking questions - that's his own responsibility - and Twitter lying to investors. If they did lie, there could be criminal prosecutions.
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Lying is usually a high bar to prove, often because it comes down to exact wording. "We estimated 0% of twitter users are bots". Isn't a lie if when asked how you estimate it you present a deeply flawed methodology. Being bad at what you do is not lying.
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Are you saying there is a pretty good chance that Twitter has been lying to their institution investors along with their public auditor? That some of the top 10 largest institutional investors in the world didn't do their diligence? That one of the big four auditors, PwC, just let this slide since they been auditing them (2009)?
Or are we saying none of those guys could figure this out but Disney and Elon could?
Here is relevant lines from Twitter's Filings:
Under Key Metrics:
"...In making this determination
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The point is that rich famous people are finally finding the courage to admit the truth behind allegations I've been called stupid, paranoid, crazy, incompetent, and criminally libelous for making years earlier.
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not just twitter, but yea and this subject has been strictly taboo in the circles that matter for decades
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Mostly that all platforms are subject to bots.
Re: And? (Score:1)
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Does it need a third point? I think the first two are valid enough given what is currently happening.
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It's to tell us that 'bots have a benefit - that is, that Twitter isn't owned by Disney because of them. Horray for the 'bots!
It's also the reason Musk doesn't own Twitter, which I take as much less of a 'win' at this point, but you may have different opinions. Come to think of it, perhaps Twitter quietly cultivates bots and doesn't remove them - specifically to fail due diligence?
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I wouldn't race to pat Elon on the back. He made some costly mistakes that are going to be difficult for him to unwind, this is going to takes years to settle.
The materially adverse effect agreement allows the buyer (Elon) to walk away, but itself doesn't impose any fines on the seller. Without triggering a MAE, the reverse breakup fee is in effect. This is is where the buyer must pay the seller for terminating the agreement. These agreements are designed to protect sellers and rarely if ever have clauses t
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this is going to takes years to settle.
I doubt that, it's a five-day bench trial starting October 17. We'll have a decision well before Christmas.
He has one chance to appeal with the Supreme Court of Delaware but there's plenty of precedent for the threshold to trigger an MAE being very high and specific action causes being enforceable.
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it seems fair to say that Twitter's bot numbers are far higher than the 5% they seem. Some estimates have placed the number of bots on Twitter as high as 80%!
Twitter doesn't claim that only 5% of accounts are bots. The 5% number is the percent of accounts they serve ads to, "monetizable daily active users" (mDAUs). They also acknowledge that the number could be inaccurate. If Twitter was actually gaming the mDAU there could be an issue with the SEC filing and maybe a case for Elon, but if you've been reading the Chacelor's rulings so far on this case (which you clearly haven't), she's not been receptive to speculation and conjecture so far.
I'll happily admit I'
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Yeah, there are plenty of bots on twitter. How many accounts are just reposting links to press releases for their companies, or science articles from a particular field. These are all bot accounts.
The fact that there are bot accounts was never in dispute. The question is how accurate the count of monetizable user is. Actually I believe the claim of twitter was about daily users which is certainly much smaller than total number of open account.
Re:Twitter is pretty much screwed (Score:5, Interesting)
But it simply does not matter. Musk keeps talking about bots, you're talking about bots, the article is talking about bots.
Yes, Twitter has lots of bots. But it was never about the total number of bots. It's about Monetizable Daily Active Users (mDAU), Twitter's attempt to measure actual human, non-bot users (which they can advertise to). That number is meant to exclude the "80%" you're mentioning. along with inactive users. Twitter estimates the mDAU number may include 5% bots, but admits it may be higher or lower than that.
Let's say there are ~80% bots. So, mDAU is ~20%, and 5% of that (1% of total users, including bots) is what's being argued about. Some CEO who can't remember details saying a lot of users were bots is meaningless to the situation between Twitter and Musk.
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Let's say Twitter's estimate of bots being 5% of mDAU is way off, and there are actually twice as many, 10%. That results in a reduction of "real" mDAU from 95% to 90%, or a reduction in numbers of 1-(90%/95%) ~= 5.3%.
So that's why Musk talks about the bot estimate being wrong, instead of talking about mDAU. Claiming there are twice as many bots sounds much more serious than the actual effect on "real" mDAU of 5.3%.
Fecebook no different (Score:3)
Same with slashdot (Score:2)
This place must have a 10:1 sock puppet to real user ratio.
It's Called A Pseudonym, Bob... (Score:2)
...and the users of Twitter are very happy to have them.
Likewise, the users are also very relieved that you never had to brains to figure that out.
It doesn't matter if 99% of the accounts are fake (Score:2)
With the exception of a few nation states I would expect Twitter can indeed identify real accounts from fake. And I don't think there are that many of those nation state accounts. From there the only real question is are they lying about who they show ads to. I doubt it because it would only be a matter of time before a disgruntled employee revealed something like that and the re
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What matters is can they identify real accounts and having done that are they only displaying advertisements to real accounts.
Why or perhaps more clear, in what context?
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What matters is can they identify real accounts and having done that are they only displaying advertisements to real accounts.
What matters even more, if that's true, how do I fake being a bot so I don't get pestered by ads?
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What matters even more, if that's true, how do I fake being a bot so I don't get pestered by ads?
You still see ads on the web? Get better blockers. I can't remember ever seeing an ad on twitter, but I also can't remember ever visiting twitter without at least abp or uo. In ordinary use I run with ns, uo, abp, fb container, and more, but even just uo completely blocks ads there.
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The seeing part isn't so much the problem as the loading is. And if you block the loading, the pages refuse to serve the content you're after as well. So what I need is some way to convince them that they don't want to send their bullshit altogether and just give me the content I want.
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The seeing part isn't so much the problem as the loading is.
No, they are both big problems, unless you are experiencing the internet by carrier pigeon. Displaying animated ads in particular slows your browser, even if it's modern and your computer is modern, because browsers are so lame.
And if you block the loading, the pages refuse to serve the content you're after as well.
Most sites do not, and I have never run into a site which did that I cared about.
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Thank you! Yes! It's a worthless company that makes money by making people waste time.
Teh twittur is full of botz! (Score:2)
Yeah, antisocial networks are filled with bots, duplicated accounts, ghost accounts, paid astroturfers/shills, scamfronts, etc etc.
That's why when I hear some absurd sounding claim of "500 million users use X!", my bullshit alarm screams.
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Maybe Musk wishes he had your bullshit alarm now.
Re: Teh twittur is full of botz! (Score:2)
Bullshit alarms don't work inside a reality distortion field.
The purpose of this story is (Score:1)
doe % of bots really matter? (Score:2)
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SEC would be concerned about lying to the Public Auditor or the Public Auditor covering things up. SEC only cares about transparency on material matters. Accounting accuracy is actually PA job. PA may mess up, and raise SEC oversight, by agreeing that something dangerious to the business doesn't need to be reported in filings. Which funny enough would be raised by another PA auditing this PA. To get away with it, you would need to have 3 parties agree and risk their public image.
So there would be a st
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Does it really matter? (Score:3)
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Bots don't read ads. No one gives a shit about what is posted.
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Fake digital reality (Score:2)
Migrated to slashdot (Score:2)
Rumor has it that after Disney's investigation uncovered the large number of bots on Twitter, the bots migrated to slashdot. That would explain a lot about some of the comment posts!
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That might explain the pro-Trump / pro-Putin posts if we had more of them.
It would explain why a nerd website big on science would have so many pandemic deniers and anti-vax nutjobs.
eh (Score:2)
So they...didn't waive due diligence?
Yet more evidence ... (Score:2)
Nail in Musk's coffin (Score:2)
The point of this story is that Disney did its due diligence and backed out. Musk waived due diligence because it was a hostile takeover. It shouldn't really matter what he turns up. He coerced TWTR into selling for $40 billion, and the board said ok. Then he got cold feet possibly because his financiers suggested putting a lien on Tesla if it turns out that he overpaid.
Doing the due diligence now may not matter. The judge will likely say that he signed a purchase contract for Twitter "as is".
Musk fired the