Earlier today Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted, “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.” He also said, “still committed to acquisition.”
While tech stocks have been collapsing over the past 15 days, from a big picture perspective this approach by Musk looks like a potential negotiation strategy to lower the offer. The actual number of spam/bot accounts on the platform is unknown.
CNBC – […] Twitter shares fell more than 8% Friday and are down about 23% from Musk’s agreed-upon purchase price of $54.20 per share. Part of the dip is related to an overall slump in technology stocks this month. The Nasdaq has fallen another 11% since the market close on April 25, the day Twitter accepted Musk’s offer.
“This is probably a negotiation tactic on behalf of Elon,” Toni Sacconaghi, Bernstein senior research analyst, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “The market has come down a lot. He’s probably using the guise of true active users as a negotiation ploy.”
Musk may feel some pressure or obligation to other potential investors in Twitter to lower the price, even if the world’s wealthiest man is more price agnostic.
Musk is in talks with outside investors for both equity and preferred financing to lessen his personal stake in Twitter. If he can get a lower price for Twitter, the returns could be higher for outside investors if and when Twitter returns to public ownership or is resold. (read more)
I know Twitter has a good percentage of dopey Mules trafficking in the democrat talking points (lies) Du Jour.
Do they count among the ‘spam’ accounts?
Maybe he should only pay full price for blue checkmark accounts…
Spam accounts are probably in the millions.
Spam accounts are most likely in the 100 million area!
Apparently Twitter hasn’t produced the number of Bots and Spam accounts. And they have to.
Oh but wait …it’s the number of accounts that supports the amount Twitter charges advertisers.
If Twitter -supplied that number to advertisers they would have had it handy by now. Unless…
A good case could be made for fraud, by the advertisers.
Try an analogy; you own/produce a small newspaper, like a Pennysaver.
Your income is from selling advertising, and your advertising rates are set based on distribution.
Your circulation drops, considerably, and stays low. So, you LIE, and continue to tell advertisers patently false info, on your circulation.
If you gave them accurate #’s, you would have to lower your advertising rates, and some advertisers may choose to spend their advertising $’s some place else.
A wealthy individual decides to BUY your paper, and as a part of accessing its value, insist on accurate circulation #’s, which will be part of the public offering, and so general knowledge.
Your advertisers now realise you have committed FRAUD, for YEARS, by misrepresenting the circulation of the paper.
Gee, no wonder Twitter instituted a “poison pen” that was against the best interests of the stockholders, and therefore a violation of their Fiduciary trust obligations, in order to prevent the aquisition.
And yes, like the Federal gov subsidy, does this same fraud apply to Facebook, etc.?
Winner, winner, Chicken Dinner! The revelations coming out, as a result of Musks efforts to buy Twitter, could well break the big tech monopoly, and expose the whole thing for the Gov sponsored/created Con it is.
I saw a tweet earlier in response to Musk tweeting his offer was on hold suggesting that Musks own account was infested with 57% bots, so yes, he should insist on accurate numbers.
Further, I wonder how many banned accounts are on the books, and used to count towards users for advertisers.
I wonder if that was his plan going in..? (..Smile!)
It’s more than just advertising fraud. Twitter is a publicly traded company on the NYSE. If it’s entire financial and investment foundation is based on phony numbers, there is a big case to be made for some serious investment fraud and long prison sentences. It’s no wonder Twitter has reinstated so many conservatives with big numbers of followers and so many libs have lost so many followers: Twitter is trying to cook the books to meet the 5% bot-threshold. Part of Elon’s agreement to buy Twitter involves his examination of “the books.” Twitter’s corruption would be exposed, Musk could pull out, and Twitter could plummet out of the Stock Market and out of existence; with some of the big shots off to Leavenworth or some such place to “make little ones outta big ones.”
Would love to see a graphic representation of before Elon/After Elon on a time line from the first rumor of.
Total reported users
Total bots (clearly defined)
Total known banned users (inactive)
# followers of of key selected users across the political spectrum
Readership and retweets of selected users across the political spectrum
Would love to obtain copies of the filtering/bannig algorithms used.
And Musk could inherit a slew of lawsuits by advertisers for fraud.
A friend who does websites, search optimization, etc. told me you can buy all the followers you want. With all the competition among celebrities, they probably have what would be embarrassing numbers of bot followers if they were to be exposed by this move. My fingers are crossed.
It’s possible Musk’s whole play is to expose government control of Twitter, or bring some smug tech oligarchs down a peg, or to destroy Twitter’s monopoly to allow competition to flourish. The possibilities are vast.
I’m just glad I don’t own their stock right now because a lot of people who are counting on a premium for their shares may just be cannon fodder in a war of the tech titans
“Buy on the rumor.. Sell on the news!”
How many bots are there…. it would be good if we are going to we find out? Even at 5% of around 229 Million accounts, that’s a LOT of bots.
From May 2nd, “Twitter Inc estimated in a filing on Monday that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.
The social media company had 229 million users who were served advertising in the first quarter.”
Link: Twitter estimates spam, fake accounts comprise less than 5% of users -filing | Reuters (archive.ph)
monetizable daily active users..
That one comment by Twitter should make a person think twice about signing up.
Good thing Musk isn’t buying Facebook, eh? You’d never know how many fake accounts on Fakebook.
Twitter is LYING.
Sounds low to me…could be much higher…
Seriously: do you really think that you have “millions of followers” who are hanging on your every word? 🤡
If you are going to go to the trouble of creating a bot, and given that your motive is presumably to try to sway opinion,…WHY would you only create one, or a few?
You wouldn’t, unless your motive is just to create “mischief”, and its a lot of work for a small return.
Another question this inevitably leads to, and one THEY desperately want to ignore;
WHO is it, that is creating these Bots? They have long aknowleged there ARE Bots, but in addition to downplaying the #’s, say they come from “Russia”.
Highly suspiscious cat, given all the false accusations thrown at “Russia”.
So, assume for the moment its NOT Russia, or even CCP, N.Korea or Iran,..
The U.S. I/C with “six ways from Sunday to screw you” comes to mind.
Perhaps this was the “pay off” for the subsidy;
We provide you with the Infrastructure, in exchange you let us run 100’s of 1000’s of bots, to influence public perception.
And, you implement algorythms to enforce a speech code, that WE, as the Fed Gov can’t.
Well thought out and the most logical explanation.
Well we know from Wikileaks leaked emails the DNC paid hordes of people to sit in a room all day every day online to spread lies, disinformation and push the DNC talking points. I am certain there are others. Just remember whatever the powers to be are talking about, they are doing themselves already. With all the gov’t talk of disinformation, “malinformation”, etc. It’s because they are PROJECTING!
So, around 45 million spam/bot accounts. Yes, that’s a lot. Wonder if they’re manufactured by DOJ and/or CIA.
Well, 5% of 229,000,000 users would be 11,450,000 bots. That’s still a lot of bots. And it makes you really wonder what all those bots are actually used for–upgrade certain products? downgrade competitor products? Up or downgrade certain politicians?
And with all the supposed “high tech ability and algorithms” twitter uses they somehow don’t know how many bots and what they do? really?
There are way more spam bots, (and or duplicate accounts) than that, same on Instagram. I am thinking 100 million on Twitter and maybe 200-300 million on Instagram.
If Musk pulls out of the Offer due to fake user numbers, Twitter dies. There is no coming back from that for that company.
It’s also a win for us as the driving force of Social Justice Warriors was Twatter.
If Musk still acquires Twitter if the number of real users is inflated its still a win for us.
And an extra bonus win… Musk has stated he’ll move Twitter out of San Francisco. If SF Bay Area is hallowed out of the Big Tech Players the Democrats loose their Golden Goose of Donations!
Imagine that: Being forced to choose business over politics? When it’s a company under SEC regulation, though, it’s best they conduct themselves honestly… or else!
If Big Tech moves out of the bay area, then at least folks will be able to recognize the brown stuff on the sidewalks. At present there is little difference between Big Tech and the brown stuff.
But they have maps showing where it’s at so you don’t step on it./ sarcasm
They stopped updating the map as it was embarrassing the Elites here in SF.
But on a side note, I have seen Millenials fixated on their phones walking in the streets of SF and literally stepping on it, and not noticing or caring that they stepped on “organic matter.”
I was hoping this is a planned strategy by Musk to “out” the real # of bots and artificial users. Sunlight the best disinfectant.
Was hoping the exact same thing myself.
Imagine if he shows the world how fake Twitter is and it doesn’t actually cost him any money.
He may buy it anyway at a lower price and real # of bots and artificial users would give him an excuse to do a more “extreme” deep house cleaning, maybe “accidently” eliminating some of the very undesirable accounts.
likewise
The Potemkin users of Twitter have been purged and conservative users have been reinstated. This is how they came up with this 5% of bots.
The popularity of the left on twitter is a fabrication…
Either that or Obama became WILDLY less popular on Twitter.
I wonder what’s the percentage of bots that inhabit the CTH.🤔
That does not compute.
Is this what’s happening to Netflix, too? Fake accounts (non-paying government accounts) are the only accounts left … as real paying accounts cancel?
My guess, since Twitter has been used as a tool of the extreme Left and the Democrats, etc., is that the “bots” are closer to half. And if not, there are cadres of “hired guns” from the extreme left, probably Soros’ funded, whose sole job it is to keep the desired narrative spinning.
I read twitter threads and do not have an account. During the Trump presidency, I had bookmarked at least 25-30 twitter accounts (real people making a lot of sense), and they were all but a few banned. A lot of folks went to gab. A lot of people are waiting for Truth Social. Twitter, as it stands, is full of extreme lefties whether paid or not. Twitter could have been great, but it’s not. Maybe Musk can “buy the dip” and turn it into something great. During that same time period, FaceBook and YouTube banned a lot of normal people asking normal questions or sharing information. I’d like to see Musk turn things around, honestly I would. But, I have no proof that Musk is not part of the globalist club and this whole thing is a big ruse for another purpose. Just sayin’.
Rush claimed to have identified the “thousands” of negative TWT accounts attacking him as coming from less than ten bots.
Pretty sure there’s a clause for waiving the breakup fee if significant fraud is discovered.
Pretty sure Musk didn’t hire lousy lawyers who wouldn’t have included that clause.
I think it is one billion if either side breaks the deal.
But: “fraud on the market” is a Federal crime. A contract is null and void if the law has been broken.
Agree, I know I read that somewhere.
Found it, Link: Elon Musk’s Twitter deal includes a $1 billion termination fee on both sides | TechCrunch
“Fraud vicciates EVERYTHING” including supposedly “ironclad” contracts.
If he can prove the #of bots is significantly more than the 5 percent they assert in their filings,…
THATS the ball game. Among the consequences, FEC investigations, advertiser class action lawsuit for fraud, …
And just as a matter of public opinion, aside from legalities, Facebook and all of big tech get tarred with the same brush.
I wish I could get on Truth to see for myself, but I don’t have an iPhone…
I read that it won’t be much longer before they release a web based access and then Android phones. It’s coming!
Same here, plus my eyes are too old to try to read on a phone. That’s why I have my laptop. No Spring chicken here.
My eyes aren’t that great but i just don’t like using my phone, I much prefer a computer for most things.
According to Nunes– it should be accessible on any device by the end of May.
Musk is exempt from the breakup fee clause if it’s proved there is significant fraud on behalf of Twitter.
Its like one media company buying another based on the number of customer accounts, such as if someone bought Netflix for their customers base only to find that 50% of the subscription numbers were fake.
If it’s found that a large percentage of Twitters users are fake Musk can either renegotiate a sliding price( % real users = % of the $44 billion initial offer) or simply walk away without penalties.
Either way Twitter and it’s silent backers are exposed and lose big time.
There’s that word that Nunes talked about.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/05/04/splodey-head-alert-donald-trump-encouraged-elon-musk-to-buy-twitter/
If you have a social media product, engagement is more valuable then user count or click-through rate. If it’s just political subterfuge, spam, and witch hunters with nothing better to do…there’s not much to engage in.
I read PT’s posts on twitter, but engaged them elsewhere.
That’s why I try to link internally here at CTH if there is a specific article I can point to that a CTH reader may like, provides context, not be aware of, or missed. It increases engagement. (generally speaking, not your comment CMTX)
And it could be valid. All the disappearing followers kind of shocked everyone so now they’re going to have to find out what the facts are before putting a value on the company. We know that these days the subscribers or users are the online companies real product thus fewer users == less product to sell.
But I’ve been thinking he’s playing this to fool around with the sale/stock price and then pull the rug out and buy it at a much lower rate. (buy low sell high). His claim of doing it solely to make it better is baloney in my view. He started out trying to sneak and he’s using his twitter account to put down the company and manipulate everyone.
Remember his genius is in business not creating, not inventing but business which is the buy and selling of things of value for more than you paid for them. Tesla is crap and over price but it’s like Apple; it’s a social signal of ones level of class in society. It’s simple as that it’s an icon that coincidentally can move a few miles with people inside.
Meanwhile the world is about to enter a period where our sovereignty will be able to be seized by a select group of people in WHO if they declare an emergency. They can send troops to take away your guns, force you to lockdown or get an injection. It’s happening right now. There won’t be any way to stop them except on the ground.
” They can send troops to take away your guns, force you to lockdown or get an injection.”
Hope it doesn’t get that far, although I can EASILY see Biden and his fellow democrats willingly signing up for that.
I cannot, however, see most of the US accepting foreign troops on our soil forcing injections, lockdowns, and particularly taking away guns.
They cower when sent into other countries to “peacekeep”.
Pretty sure it would not go over well for them here.
It’s one thing for governments to sign away their sovereignty it’s another thing to actually enforce it.
In Canada a lot of people are quiet, polite citizens, doesn’t mean they would simply roll over and accept foreign control even if our government agrees to it. Remember the trucker convoy, that’s a sign that many citizens have a limit and aren’t simply going to accept the decrees of a extra-national body with no authority whatsoever.
It would be even less likely to happen in the US as most Red states would call up their state national guard to repel any such intervention and the number of armed citizens(GOP/Dem/Indy) would vastly outnumber any UN forces they could deploy.
i.e. deployment of UN peacekeepers into the continental US = suicide mission.
They could potentially make US Troops do their dirty work.
However, I have heard that the US Senate would have to agree to this WHO takeover of OUR sovereignty. I hope that’s true and I pray they will never agree to that.
In Canada we don’t have any such protections as Trudeau and his party have throughly infected most levels of government. But it doesn’t mean we lose, people have had enough and if the WHO tried to enforce its decrees it’s going to find how difficult that’s going to be.
In the US you have an additional layer of protection at the State level which allows for autonomy no matter what the Federal government states.
The US Constitution doesn’t allow any Federal government to arbitrarily dissolve US sovereignty on their authority alone.
i.e. sovereignty isn’t derived from the government but is derived from the consent of the people.
This WHO decree is a complete distraction from Ukraine and what is happening to the globalists across the world.
Do you really think China, Russia, India would sign over their sovereignty to the WHO?
I think the way it’s written (can’t remember the amendment) is that our senate must ratify every and all treaties that the president tries to get us into. That is why the treaty obutthead tried to get us into where NATO would confiscate our guns was never ratified.
Civilisations and Governments collapse very slowly,..and then ALL-AT-ONCE.
And, it actually doesn’t take GUNS, to make it happen.
It takes UNITY of the populace, deciding they are “Mad as Hell, and not going to take it, any more!” and by concrete actions, withdrawing their consent to be governed.
And, contrary to those who understandably say “THIS is IT, IF we don’t act now it will be curtaind” and those “Debbie downer” eeyores who say “its already too late, we are DONE for!”,…
it is NEVER “too late”.
Every act of the Insane Idiots In Charge, takes us one step closer to Uniting the People, and moving them closer to that tipping point.
To see what such a “tipping point” looks like, and for confirmation it doesn’t require guns, and there is NO “too late”,..
Do an I-net search of “the Singing revolution” which happened in the Baltic States, prior to the USSR withdrawing from Afganistan, prior to the collapse of the Berlin wall.
Its a story EVERY patriot should know, and tell their progeny.
Like your thinking 👍.
I’ve seen too many people out trying to dispense black pills every chance they get.
They’re the ones saying not to vote any longer because it would be stolen anyways, they’re the ones saying that the other side has it all planned out and their is nothing which can be done about it.
I’ve been watching this battle since 2016 and watch the moves of the enemy carefully and they are not moves of a side totally confident in their superiority and victory, they are actions of a side which is panicking and showing signs of desperation.
Instead I saw their true face in one of their puppet leaders, PM Justin Trudeau, when the people of Canada unexpectedly stood up and said enough!
In the form of the Freedom Convoy which I think was the tipping point for Canadians.
I saw in his face that of panic and fear when it dawned on him just how little support he really had and that the convoy was headed in his direction.
The convoy didn’t have guns, black masked thugs throwing fire bombs or anything else, they had bouncy castles for the kids, street hockey, hot tubs, outdoor cookouts and truck horns as well as music and dancing.
This struck terror into the hearts of the corrupt political elites in Canada and even cost the Conservative party leader his job.
It caused them to go nuclear with the Emergencies Act in front of the whole world and it showed Canada just what kind of political leadership it has.
The same kind of panic arose when Russia took action against Ukraine, the level of open fear in the tweets from various Deep State players.
We haven’t won the war yet but we are far from losing….
Definitely a large part of the bots are controlled by our intelligence agencies to “nudge” the popular opinion…
Not to “nudge” but to “shove”.
390/400 million users, Musk wants to know? Someone in the know told musk, they do not have that many users. I would want to know, if I were shelling out that kind of money. Same goes for Googly Fakebook and the rest.
Personally, I think its like 250 million. How many have more than one account? How many Bots?
I have 10 Instagram accounts, 9 of them are not active because I forgot the password and just created a new one, vs. dealing with the leftist who run the site (who want all your private info, to get your password reset). The unused accounts are still counted as another user, even though they are not and are not being used either. Relative to Twitter, I don’t want, or have a twitter account, but I imagine with younger women using the site to promote “only fans”, etc. they probably all have multiple accounts , one real, one alias, and one for nefarious purposes (so minimum 2-3, maybe more being duplicates).
Yep, pretty sure that goes for a lot of people.
Fortunately for me, I’ve been banned from so many websites over the year, I never bothered to sign-up on any social media sites, knowing I would be banned at some point, except Gab. Have not been booted off there ‘Yet’.
Somedays I have to say it like I see it!
And you won’t be. Real freedom of speech over there. Musk should team up with Andrew Torba if his intentions are true.
I’m more of the opinion that Twitter has outlived it’s usefulness to the regime, and is being destroyed on purpose. There are still too many sites on the internet (like this one, gab etc) that pedal ‘disinformation’.
In the next act of the play, we are going to be introduced to the ‘Ministry of Truth’ that will censor ALL websites eventually. It will start out targeting social media, then progress to others. It has to happen. The internet has changed the way information is distributed, and it can’t be controlled anymore.
Their narratives are not built to withstand scrutiny, so the scrutiny has to be removed. This Twitter drama is justification for that.
Their narratives are not built to withstand scrutiny, so the scrutiny has to be removed.
You hit the nail on the head.
It will be destroyed once Nancy and Chuck’s donors get their shorts in place…. Same goes for Tesla, they are still trying to make billions on that trade that went belly up! LMAO I would be looking into whom (democrat linked donors, etc.) is shorting Boeing as well, seems the Biden Regime is attacking that company as well.
I bet Trump’s delay in returning to Twitter was so that millions of his followers wouldn’t reopen legitimate twitter accounts a skew the Bot/Reality number in favor of the MSM and Libtards
I think PDJT’s reason for not returning to twitter hell was more like ….Truth Social. That’s his brand. Why promote someone else’s brand?
Twitter is running ads online and on Instagram trying to sign up new users, LMAO. Have never seen Twitter do that in my lifetime on social media.
If nothing else, we get to find out how many fake followers all those media and Hollywood types have.
Didn’t some of them come out a few weeks ago and say they’d lost
10 to 15 thousand “followers”?
The Hollywood crowd would be deluded enough to think that there
was ACTUALLY that many people that hung on their every word.
The famous K family has 300+ million followers on IG for the most followed daughters. Yet their new show account barely had 1.2 million followers, they claimed it was the most watched show on Hulu. Nothing against them personally, because they are not the ones creating the bot armies, etc. to have a high follower number.
Most likely it is an arm of the Leftist Obola/Stalin Regime doing it…. they also had people around the family , the next layer down (their groupie friends/ clingers) promoting the Poison Jab with Fauci, because the daughters didn’t want to promote his BS.
I imagine the ratio of spam bots & duplicates to real users is something like 1-4,
being 1 real user to 4 spammers, or duplicate accounts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Standard negotiation technique to lower a purchase price by finding faults in the product. Biz 101, really.
Like Trump and Mar-a-Lago, walking in after he gave them a price and saying the place is a total s-hole.
Especially if there is strong reason to believe the product actually is faulty. Common sense 101.
If the books are cooked on user counts, I reckon the price is zero, or less than…. Just like Enron!
How many of these bots voted in the 2020 election?
81 Million votes is a known lie. Twitter and Facebook are flat out lying about their number of users. Bitcoin is flat out lying about everything. The government is flat out lying about the true inflation. The Ukrainian government flat out lies about everything.
A world of lies. Diogenes says hello and good luck finding an honest person on the Left. Thankfully, I find many honest people here though.
“Live not by Lies.”
The price of water at the local store just increased 14%, plus 10% tax on that, so 15.4% in the last week.
.
Bots are likely a large part of twitter’ revenue services. To create narratives. ‘oh people didn’t like this movie? Let’s pay for bots to attack this actor/actress to justify our terribleness.’ It also conveniently pushes the platform to tighten narrative control, put people into boxes, etc.
They use the bots to blackmail leftist celebs too. If they don’t support a cause, the Regime sends in the bot army to attack them, causing them to support their cause. Some people/celebs that appear leftist by their posts really aren’t.
As soon as Bezo’s withdrew the BLM/ Obama charity on AMZN due to outright Fraud on the use of those funds, they started collapsing his stock price…. They use the bots to attack anyone who is not paying up, the same way Obama used the Govt’ agencies to attack large companies and banks!
My guess is way way more than 5%.
This topic was in the Featured clip on Rumble this AM. Maria B with the CEO Of Rumble.
I said then that this is WINNING.
We now know, at the very minimum, how many bots they believe they have. SCORE.
We know Pierre Delecto has a bot, Mitt Romney. Which one do you think they will delete?
Bot.
The word puts me in mind of summertime’s pestilential and highly annoying Bot Flies. They lay eggs on a horse’s legs. Then, the horse licks the sticky boogers off and the eggs wind up in the digestive tract, where, as parasites, they wreak havoc and can be quite destructive.
Bot. Bots. Bot are parasites.
.
The bots destroyed the credibility of Ivermectin — how fitting . . .
Elon should also be looking into how many accounts appearing as active, have the users locked out of– so they can’t actually access. There’s a LOT & it started back around the 2016 election.
I can also attest to in the Spring 2017, upon my ph being visibly hacked- forced to make my Twitter account “private”, & to log out of it, along with deleting relevant research. I was further threatened to stay off it.
Apparently, somebody didn’t like my digging skills/Tweets. 😏
There’s a much larger angle on this:
Twitter sells advertising. If it can be proven that the company has been comprised mostly of bots? BOOM come the law suits!!! Imagine finding out you’ve been buying ad space on twitter because you thought you were reaching millions of people?
And Elon can break the deal (which ends Twitter) if it can be proven that Twitter was negotiating in bad faith.
Twitter is basically an Enron without any energy !
Exactly on the ads thing- any advertisers have been getting ripped off for years!
Nunes was the only public figure to bring up this very issue (way back). I recall b/c I was glad to finally hear somebody else point it out.
What about the Bots etc. that get turned off, while trying to make the sale to Elon Musk. If they can keep this secret, they may get away with it.
If this is true, then Elon Musk has disabled Twitter while the negotiations are on going.
No Sale will ever take place, but in the meantime Twitter is disabled. Elon Musk will try stretching the negotiations out.
I have more than dozen family members that had accounts for years. Now, none use those account (subscriptions), their accounts are still being counted as users. They told me, they stopped using twitter when the scamdemic started or they where locked out.
Even in a crazy world, business is still business.
Would love, love, love, love to know how many fake users there are on FAKEBOOK.
When my wife was alive she rarely got any “friend” requests.
Now, it’s happening on a daily to weekly basis. Will happen in clumps, and, in a
given week there will be 3-4 requests.
When it first started happening, I tried to track down the person making the
request, because they were an old friend from 20 years ago. Said person had
did some enormously kind things for our family, and had moved out of state.
So I thought that it would be a good idea to track them down, and tell them
that regrettably my wife had died.
Then, it got weirder. We started getting “friends” requests from friends
and acquaintances that I run into on a regular basis.
So……. my hypothesis is this.
Facebook is inflating their viewership numbers by recycling existing
“friends” into otherwise dormant accounts. Like ones that dead persons
have.
I promise you there’s a s-ton of fake/automated users of fakebook too.
The left lives as Potemkin citizens where they can never be allowed to know that the true believers are in a tiny minority of people where the majority are still in the conservative spectrum.
And as long as the left are fooled into believing they are main stream, the rest of the people sense they must “comply” in order to get by in life. This is the pure essence of political correctness.
To make people censor themselves and their actions (political correctness) people need to be afraid.
Ripping ALL of that down will free the right and destroy the left.
.
Your last sentence is an underlying thought I have had since Trump came down the escalator — but, it takes so much patience to keep on waitin’ . . .
Thanks for the explanation as I’ve always wonderedwhy in the last few years there’s a line of of people wanting to ‘Friend’ me when I don’t ever post anything. Only sporadic comments mostly on a private page. Your explanation makes sense.
Hope all is well with you. Guess you read SD’s post re: Pence coming to support our crooked gov. Worse, SD says he’s going to win. I dislike Pence instensely. 45 has always said decent things about him. After this stint, he better not in the future.
MaineCoon: I think that they are using accounts that have little to
no activity to up their numbers. So, in my case it’s the fact that my
wife is dead.
In your case it’s because your account lies unused. So they up their
“viewership” by using it.
Another HUGE bot activity location is on You Tube. ANYTHING said
by late night talk show hosts that supports the narrative generally gets
2.7 million views. Despite the fact that most of these talk shows would
be pleased as punch if their ratings on a given night were for over
400 thousand to 5 hundred thousand.
As to Pence showing up: someone should be out posting signs. Everywhere
that Pence is driving through saying this:
Benedict Arnold welcomes Judas to the State of Georgia.
.
My first foray into on-line commenting was over 20 years ago.
I was on a member on a site that was a discussion board and would notice the same two user names continually conversing with each other.
I suggested then that it was pretty pitiful that someone had to have two accounts in order to appear to have someone to talk to . . .
The administrators outed the guy — he actually had three user names; they just subsumed all of his identities into one account which bore the three account names.
Probably lots of Pierre Delecto’s out there.
I still find it fascinating how quickly conservatives tend to jump on bandwagons. And when there is the first tiny encouragement out of the mouth of those either we know are the enemy, or are really quite unknown to us – suddenly there are all kinds of wonderful attributes assumed about the person. We actually have no idea what Elon Musk’s true motives are for anything. I believe he is all about himself. And that is never a good scenario. I don’t know if he is just being a good businessman in this particular moment, but it could also be one big game. I actually don’t believe he cares for conservatives – or President Trump.
To your last point, I agree, he is not a fan of conservatives. But he believes in free speech and thinks the left can win their arguments in an open forum. He’s wrong, but nobody said he was a great sociologist. Plus even if he’s wrong, he can still make a lot of money off the business deal.
It will be interesting if he does follow through on the deal to see his interpretation of free speech. Your thoughts do shed some light. On him not maybe being a sociologist– He certainly has it wrong about President Trump being divisive and implying not so subtly that Biden won. People on the left are not truthful, so I am still just mainly observing.
I never considered the business model of starting an internet social media company, and then using robot servers masquerading as people to inflate the number of users to increase advertisement revenue. I would have thought they have a way to audit this.
This is the business model for all social media and online games.
Shape opinions, businesses within business, collect Intel to use and sell, collect government hand outs for amount of users, all done by programmers making macros.
There won’t be an audit by the government because essentially these companies work for the government.
I think, Musk should do a hostile take over of Facebook and Youtube! IMO!
Why not? No more safe spaces for the insane leftist to spew their filth!
I reject the derogetory assumption on a man’s character. Written into Musk’s offer was the stipulation: no more then 5% of accounts were Bots or fake. Musk’s offer was calculated on 1/ a per share basis.
In response to CNBC’s prideful professional Monopoly board players. Recall, Musk offered $10. per share more then Twitters posted per share price.
They were a Tech stock then and still are now. The”tech stocks are down”, he’s trying to save money, is an oxymoron.
for those unclear what an oxymoron is here’s Merrium Websters definition:
“Oxymoron : a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (such as cruel kindness)
broadly : something (such as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements”.
I like the “cruel kindness” and “incongruous elements” and especially the “moron” part.
I venture few have seen Twitter’s documentation, or lack of, to Musk.
I can’t imagine Twatter misrepresenting how many accounts it has or trying g to cover-up it’s valid numbers. 🤔😏🤪
Hard to imagine bots on twitter represent less than 5% of the accounts.
Hard to imagine Elon is unaware of this.
Elon seems to be quite aware of the playbook of the Totalitarians. As they pretend not to know things, Elon shines a light and asks them if they really fail to see what is clear to everyone else.
While the pretense is their most frustrating and powerful quality (totalitarians) it’s also their achilles heel. Strong when others go along with the pretense, weak when others start to think for themselves and draw back the curtains.
Most of us saw the split of our peers during grade school. Those who would go along with the pretense to gain social status, material rewards, and/or the illusion of safety against the constant stream of “threats”, and those who would not.
“We are all just walking eachother home”, as a friend of mine is fond of saying. This always help take the sting out of the conduct I witness from others.
“We are all just walking each other home.” 👏 1,000 x ^ (Apologies for my low-budget emoji assortment!)
I assume that the ‘Bernstein senior analyst’ knows that Musk’s current offer price far exceeded the market price for the shares, so why Musk would suddenly be concerned about price is somewhat questionable. I have another take on this: some of us who have been ‘paying attention’ believe that soon the day of anonymity on the internet will be over, and that you will need confirmed ID of some sort, in order to access the internet at all. While bots, shills, trolls, etc., are absurdly annoying, they are also representative of complete internet anonymity, fake id’s, whatever. While on the surface one might be happy that Musk is attempting to…reduce?….disclose??…the number of bots and fake accounts on Twitter, perhaps, just like the Patriot Act or the CARES Act sounded great on the surface, the titles hid a more insidious meaning below the surface. Potentially, Musk is assisting in the removal of your internet anonymity.
There is nothing wrong with DUE DILIGENCE and qualified inspections.
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Musk is not an idiot.
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Who of us purchase important assets with-out due diligence.
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Musk’s offer was not purchase as is where is basis.
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Happily, it also gives the markets and the public at large some understanding of what is going on operationally at Twitter.
Pro Hint: even if someone is buying on a “As Is Where Is” agreement basis, inspection of assets is typically allowed. If NOT run from any such deal. Who knows what liabilities they are signing up for.
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When you purchase a home, have qualified inspector look at the structure from roof to foundations with HVAC and all utilities covered.
Bob, I had to chuckle at your post which, although excellent advice, is completely opposite of the current housing market where (in many locations) the only winning bids are all-cash offers with NO contingencies. Thus, other than what you are able to see during a brief walkthrough, the sales are ‘as is’. We do still hire an inspector after-the-fact to find out the true condition of what we bought and hope for the best.
Maybe they found a few “curious gaps” in the server infrastructure from an audit. Just a bit more of that old Obama Black Magic.
Remember when AOL was the world’s source of floppy disks? Turns out they were counting every disk that they mailed out as a subscriber. (When Ted Turner discovered this at a board meeting, they say that a “justifiable homicide” almost happened then and there.)
I have little doubt that these social media companies have been singing from the same songbook for a very long time. By now, Musk probably suspects it – and Donald Trump definitely does, too. They’re not saying … yet. But if this did occur, it’s a white-collar crime called, “fraud on the market.”
“If it sounds too good to be true . . .”
It will be interesting just how many Bots the CIA has contracted out to these Northern Macedonia Bot Farms.
I am sure the Democrat Mules are backfilling and writing in the details of these Bot accounts to make them appear legitimate.
It is more due diligence than negotiation strategy. Musk’s offer is based upon a valuation of the company which includes its subscriber base. Twitter publicly claims to the SEC and investors that 95% are real subscribers, not bots. Musk is right to ask them to prove it.
Convenient.. Are we looking at all accounts as of today… or all accounts from the moment Musk issued his purchase offer?
Millions of accounts have been purged since Musk made his offer. Be mindful of which data set they use to base this calculation.
I have never seen a twitter ad looking for new users to sign up.
Just this week I have been seeing them on the Internet, along with seeing them on Instagram news feed.
So it seems they are trying to pad the user count with “legitimate New Users”, LMAO.
Another sign that they knew they were fraudulently reporting users.
He’s looking for the escape hatch. Whatever possessed him to offer more money than Twitter is worth? It was only a matter of time before he noticed the stench.
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The parroting of exact word usage is a huge tell that there are many birds flipping as many devices as their nests hold.
The crane it will take to huron on the demise of these fowl losers is but a feather in the wind.
That old piece of crow and his cronies on both sides of the cage will see their days of robin the people stymied in a ravenous pile-on like seagulls going after breadcrumbs on the beach.
Don’t buzzard up the flight plan by buying into the bird flu plague unless you don’t have a back-up plan to explain why all those flying units are being found dead nearby solar and wind farms.
Remember the early bird gets the worm but if that worm is infected than it will kill two birds with one stoned musk seal . . .
“No Way Elon Musk Is Going to Buy Twitter…A Company Largely Based on BOTS and Spam Accounts” President Trump on Elon Musk’s Twitter Deal
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/no-way-elon-musk-going-buy-twitter-company-largely-based-bots-spam-accounts-president-trump-elon-musks-twitter-deal/
I don’t think there’s anything suspicious about this. He’s that rich because he knows how to make a deal and conserve money where he can.
Donald Trump is “an extremely experienced businessman” with a keen sense of human nature and intuition. Elon Musk is pretty damned smart, too. “Obviously, both of them now smell something.” It will be very interesting(!) to watch how all of this now plays out. 🤡
Smart man … screw the price down. The Woke industrial Complex aren’t worth what they think they are …
Musk tendered an offer to buy the company at a fixed price ($54.20 per share) that is substantially higher than market value, and he and his associates are not now trading in shares. He would be obliged to pay that price no matter what the market would. However, it’s fairly obvious that he smells something foul, and so does Donald Trump – one of the world’s most experienced and successful businessmen. I have little doubt that they will be proved correct, but that’s just my best guess.
Sounds something similar to getting a pre-buy inspection on a house before plunking down a big pile of coin. Nice to know about any structural defects ahead of time. Nothing wrong with that. As some guy who used to be President was known to say: “trust, but verify.” If anyone puts up resistance, well maybe they’ve something to hide?
Exactly. He now has a period of time in which to do “due diligence.” If he suspects that the company has been doing something illegal, he is entitled to investigate. And, if criminal “fraud on the market” is uncovered, he is no longer bound by his $1 billion walk-away fee.
I feel like we’re watching a game of chess.
Re-read The Art of the Deal …
Is it possible to have a truly impatial entity, to detirmine the # of bots?
Is it possible to have a transparent, and so accepted by all parties WAY of detirmining the true # of bots?
Sundance elusidated ONE thing that Musks efforts expose; the true Nature of “Joes Coffee shop” with the free ‘coffee’ a result of the Federal Government underwriting the operation by supplying an infrastructure ONLY the Fed government could.
However, this latest focusing on the # of ‘bots’ may well be drawing unwanted attention (unwanted by twitter or the government) on another ASPECT of the incest between Gov and Big tech.
That they USE Bots, as a key ‘tool’ to manipulate public opinion.
Its not “all about the algorythms” as the algorythms mainly are used to block unwanted content, secondarily and as a side effect to elevate wanted content.
But, with the Bots they can make wanted content a LOT more prevalent, make it seem to be the prevailing view, and secondarily to use it to denigrate unwanted content.
So, its two tools, used in tandem to try to manipulate Public Opinion.
Its actually understandable that the average “useful idiot” leftist actually THINKS, and more importantly BELIEVES (FEELS) that they are in the majority.
They post a twitter comment, say “Justice Alito is a fascist, he sucks!”
And their comment is NOT shadow banned, they are NOT suspended in twitter time out, and they get 100,000 ‘likes’ and any who post negative comments to their tweet, are hounded by thousands of negative responces.
And all done thru algorythms and bots, and with the active support of the Fed Gov.
Yeah, Musk has certainly opened a can of worms, actually fetid, stinking garbage, that the Insane Idiots In Charge DO NOT want opened.
“Is it possible to have a truly impatial entity, to detirmine the # of bots?”
Maybe if there was a bounty put on them. One dollar each, with 20 – 50 million possible bots and fraudulent accounts, there is a mighty powerful incentive for inside tech workers to expose what they can. If it reduces the buy out by a few billion dollars, for Musk, it would be money well spent.
Wasn’t it the site hosts that curiously postured that maybe all of this Big Tech was a giant, government-run intelligence operation? C-Levels are allowed to get rich on fraudulent business results, providing they keep quiet or get the Jeffrey Epstein treatment.
On the surface it seems unlikely, but as more and more tid-bits unveil themselves, I’m not so sure now. It would still require a ton of people to keep quiet and we know how tough that is to do.
Musk is dancing pretty close to the fire here. He best be careful. He might find out too much.
And, yet, you and Sundance seem to believe that Musk isn’t one of those co-players who “are allowed to get rich on fraudulent business results (like tsla)…yadda, yadda…”
Kind of like how, now that dorsey supports stinky’s takeover, and says trump shouldn’t have been banned, it seems like all the “conservatives in self-opinion only” think dorsey’s an awesome guy. One of us!! Just like stinky – ONE OF US!!!!
Here’s a clue – they all are part of a criminal government-corporate-intelligence operation that has enriched the scum of the scum. In fact, it looks like the WEF used stinky and their media minion support crew to pump tsla to beyond ridiculous valuation to enrich all those same WEF scum (like stinky) in the biggest ponzi scam ever, not foisted on one nation, but the whole world, through the tentacles of that same stinky alma mater, the WEF.
Wrap your little minds around THAT scam!
“from a big picture perspective this approach by Musk looks like a potential negotiation strategy to lower the offer.”
Possibly, but this 5% number was reported to the SEC by Twitter. With the can of worms Musk is opening, I could just see the left target him with lawsuits for fraud after he takes ownership.
If they can’t have their little safe sandbox to play in, I could see them burning it to the ground.
I wonder if the CEO could lose his $41M golden parachute if he signed off on a material misrepresentation.
Simply doing his “due diligence” to determine the actual number of bogus accounts and discover whatever other “illusions” may be contained in their books..
Interesting developments.
One question to ask now is whether a bot account creates more computational overhead for Twitter vs actual users. If this turns out to be true than there is at least one more reason to clean out the bot accounts.