You are missing his point. He isn't saying its a hard and fast rule, just that in most cases it tends to lend at least some credibility.

Sea Speed said:

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Right. I assume, as most people should, that almost all tweets are made by bots. Certainly any tweet that is something by someone with a username like patriot385828285 is almost certainly a bot. Yet things like that get posted on this board ALL THE TIME.

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How do you define "bot"

Is that just a random person that wishes to remain anonymous on Twitter? Are we going to start refering to "socks" as "bots" on this site?

When I hear bots I think of computer generated accounts that spam messages via algo or coding and not manually from thumb tap by human.

Most of those random accounts you think are people with socks are bots and not people.

Also if your username is supposed to be Michael douglas's license plate from falling down, blue parachute for you.

So I have a question for you guys

Any chance Twitter was catching hell so they "the elites" sent in Elon to pretend to change things only for twitter to be more controlling in several years?

Maybe make immediate changes but within a few years is worse than it is. Now?

Just curious on your thought… or is Elon here to stay and make some real changes ?

musk is not sent in by anyone.


as for change, I think it will be somewhere between the end of the world that liberals are claiming and the utopia of freedom some on the right think it will be.

BusterAg said:

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WHOOP!'91 said:

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. . . said:

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Also, work ethic expectations would be extreme, but much less than I demand of myself

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 7, 2022

NEW - Elon Musk plans to fire 1,000 Twitter staff, slash reliance on ad income, then quintuple revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028.https://t.co/FmEip4298y

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 7, 2022

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Slash reliance on ad income, then quintuple revenue selling what?

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User data.

How do you think Tesla makes any money at all? It's not from selling cars. It's from selling the data of where those cars go on a daily basis.

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I think there is a significant component of selling carbon credits to other car companies as well.

But you're probably right about user data. I have pretty much given up on that front; if you have a smart phone, they got you.

Deluxe said:

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I think most in the mainstream investor community are totally missing the boat on what's about to happen with Twitter. To be honest, Elon's lightning rod polarity and mainstream's focus on the speech/censorship aspect of this are perfect cover for the brains behind the scenes to execute quietly.

I don't know what the stock is going to do between now and when it goes private, but if I could somehow get on his list of private investors, I would put every penny I have in it.

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I wouldn't bet against Musk, that's for sure. EVs, spaceships, satellites for internet...usually the government has to do those things at a loss.

Scruffy said:

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Barnes had stars.

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Ugh! That guy still kinda bothers me.

BMX Bandit said:

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musk is not sent in by anyone.


as for change, I think it will be somewhere between the end of the world that liberals are claiming and the utopia of freedom some on the right think it will be.

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We can only hope you are right .. I worry w little based on all the business Elon will get from our government via NASA plus All the electric cars Regis he will need support for

Deluxe said:

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FWIW, revenue from user data won't be much of a factor with the new Twitter

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Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Belive what you want.

*MUSK: TWITTER'S `STRONG LEFT BIAS' ROOTED IN SAN FRANCISCO HQ

Texas, here we come

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 10, 2022

BREAKING: @ElonMusk says he would reverse Trump's suspension from Twitter and called the ban "morally wrong" and "flat out stupid." pic.twitter.com/ahRTaO5caV

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 10, 2022

. . . said:

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ELON MUSK SAYS HE WOULD REVERSE DONALD TRUMP'S TWITTER BAN

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 10, 2022

JUST IN - Elon Musk says he would reverse Trump's suspension from Twitter, adds that the ban was "morally wrong" and "flat out stupid."

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 10, 2022

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Did you hear that? I felt it as well. The Big One just hit the coasts.

Interesting the Jack Dorsey references. Makes it sound like he was powerless to stop the ban of Trump. Who really was in control of Twitter?

BusterAg said:

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They report "services" revenue which is close to or exceeds their net income.

It's easy to hide these things in financial statements. When you have a thin margin on your primary source of business, small, very lucrative, sources of revenue tend to contribute a whole lot more to net income than your primary source of business.

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They lost 7 million on services and made 4.6 billion on automotive sales. The confidence with which you say stuff is pretty impressive. Their services revenue is less than their total gross profit.

BREAKING: Twitter deal could take 2-3 months and @elonmusk says he would reverse ban on #Trump calling it a “morally bad decision and foolish in the extreme.”

— Martha MacCallum (@marthamaccallum) May 10, 2022

hph6203 said:

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BusterAg said:

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They report "services" revenue which is close to or exceeds their net income.

It's easy to hide these things in financial statements. When you have a thin margin on your primary source of business, small, very lucrative, sources of revenue tend to contribute a whole lot more to net income than your primary source of business.

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They lost 7 million on services and made 4.6 billion on automotive sales. The confidence with which you say stuff is pretty impressive. Their services revenue is less than their total gross profit.

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Am I really having a financial statement analysis discussion on Texags?

Why did you stop at gross profit? Why did you only look at the first quarter of this year? What has it looked like for the last three years?

Do you think that the overhead associated with car manufacturing would be higher than the overhead associated with aggregating and selling location and user data? How many employees do you think are allocated to each? How about facilities and other capital goods?

Here is revenues in Service and Other:

Services and other revenue consists of non-warranty after-sales vehicle services, paid supercharging, sales of used vehicles, retail merchandise, sales by our acquired subsidiaries to third party customers and vehicle insurance revenue.

Here is cost of goods in Services and Other:

Cost of services and other revenue includes costs associated with providing non-warranty after-sales services, costs of paid supercharging, cost of used vehicles including refurbishment costs, costs for retail merchandise, and costs to provide vehicle insurance. Cost of services and other revenue also includes direct parts, material and labor costs and manufacturing overhead associated with the sales by our acquired subsidiaries to third party customers.

Do you have any idea about the gross profit in "acquired subsidiaries"? Maybe, a company with very little revenue and a lot of costs to make something like solar panels or batteries? Maybe there are some of these that get killed at the gross profit level, and others that make a ton of money, percentage wise?

In general, it is much easier to push costs around between companies than it is to push revenues.

Financial statements are not meant to provide investors with enough information to understand the company. They purposefully obfuscate whatever they can and want to. Financial statements are provided to be able to compare the companies current quarter to their previous quarter.

Maybe I overstated the magnitude of the overall impact to the company of that data collection, but I know it is being collected, I know generally what it is worth, and I know that there are people buying it (or at least they have).

That's a lot of words to say "I was wrong." Even if they cost shift to other categories to make their auto sales look better, they can't do it to the degree you originally suggested.

It is definitely being collected, how much revenue they're driving off of it I'm not sure. It's not much. It's primarily being collected as a method to improve their own artificial intelligence software, that makes them money on their automotive sales line (FSD licenses).


As I said earlier in the thread the data licensing is possibly a similar system to FSD, where they're utilizing the available usage patterns/language patterns of a variety of different languages to train a language algorithm. I have way fewer problems with that than if they intend on just trying to sell me products.

hph6203 said:

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It is definitely being collected, how much revenue they're driving off of it I'm not sure. It's not much.

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This discussion is boring.

You see, I help companies buy and sell data as part of my job. Not as much now as say, 3 years ago. But, I'm telling you, your wrong.

Is it "material"? In the context of total revenues, absolutely not. In the context of net income, yes.

But, whatever.

elected*

Elon Musk tweets that deal for Twitter is on hold

Quote:

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The company had earlier this month estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.

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https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/elon-musk-tweets-that-deal-for-twitter-is-on-hold?intcmp=fb_fnc

The more I think about it...

If he's getting evidence that the bots are more than the 5%, could this have massive SEC repercussions?

Is there a representation about bot numbers on some SEC filing?

Sounds like Elon is looking to get out of the deal without paying the break fee.

He could probably let it free fall and scoop it up for half the agreed price.

BMX Bandit said:

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Is there a representation about bot numbers on some SEC filing?

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Didn't Twitter recently admit that their account numbers they reported were inflated?

Counterpoint said:

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BMX Bandit said:

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petroleo y agua said:

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BigRobSA said:

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BMX Bandit said:

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Quote:

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the stars buy you a level of credibility

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Thanks foe the morning chuckle.

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Never knew BMX is black.

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I don't know about that, but he is arrogant and often wrong.

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deep breaths. it will be okay.

sorry you had to change your user name. that "Biden won't be inaugurated" thing didn't work out so well for you. Maybe those Q drops were planted by an imposter.

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What was the previous username?

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Once upon a time there was someone with a username in Spanish regarding a certain legal profession.

They made a promise, a guarantee that if Biden was inaugurated that they would be leaving TexAgs for a whole year, and then promptly returned after about four months. Self-control is an extremely hard thing to get a handle on, yknow?

BREAKING: Twitter shares plunge 14% in premarket trading after Elon Musk said Twitter takeover 'temporarily on holdhttps://t.co/S2eNjAWMIG

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) May 13, 2022

WaltonAg18 said:

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Counterpoint said:

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BMX Bandit said:

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petroleo y agua said:

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BigRobSA said:

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BMX Bandit said:

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Quote:

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the stars buy you a level of credibility

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Thanks foe the morning chuckle.

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Never knew BMX is black.

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I don't know about that, but he is arrogant and often wrong.

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deep breaths. it will be okay.

sorry you had to change your user name. that "Biden won't be inaugurated" thing didn't work out so well for you. Maybe those Q drops were planted by an imposter.

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What was the previous username?

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Once upon a time there was someone with a username in Spanish regarding a certain legal profession.

They made a promise, a guarantee that if Biden was inaugurated that they would be leaving TexAgs for a whole year, and then promptly returned after about four months. Self-control is an extremely hard thing to get a handle on, yknow?

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Ah hah!

Still committed to acquisition

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022

BMX Bandit said:

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Is there a representation about bot numbers on some SEC filing?

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Disclosure rules extend beyond SEC filings and also apply to comments made by the company in the public domain. Providing this info in an earnings call would bring it into scope.

My guess is that Elon will go through with the deal, and this is all about trying to get a lower price by claiming a Material Adverse Change due to actual users of the platform being lower than previously disclosed.

Are real people with no followers and hidden identities considered "spam/bots"?

Twitter is filled with trolls like any other online forum.

Quote:

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Nearly half of the Twitter accounts spreading messages on the social media platform about the coronavirus pandemic are likely bots, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said Wednesday.

Researchers culled through more than 200 million tweets discussing the virus since January and found that about 45% were sent by accounts that behave more like computerized robots than humans.

It is too early to say conclusively which individuals or groups are behind the bot accounts, but researchers said the tweets appeared aimed at sowing division in America.

"We do know that it looks like it's a propaganda machine, and it definitely matches the Russian and Chinese playbooks, but it would take a tremendous amount of resources to substantiate that," said Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is conducting a study into bot-generated coronavirus activity on Twitter that has yet to be published.

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https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting-about-coronavirus-are-likely-bots

Quote:

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Are real people with no followers and hidden identities considered "spam/bots"?

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no