December 21, 2017. Musk shares a tweet. “I love Twitter”. A few seconds later a user replies: “You should buy it then”. “How much does it cost?” Musk responds tightly. This exchange in recent weeks has been mentioned many times on social media. The reason is that many have identified that back-and-forth as Musk’s first manifestation of public interest in Twitter. The deal went off for good yesterday. Musk loved Twitter, maybe he still loves it, but the inability to determine the exact number of fake accounts on the platform scuttled the $ 44 billion deal. for 100% of the social network signed last April.
Musk had repeatedly questioned the feasibility of the agreement without precise data on the number of fake accounts on the platform. He did it on 13 maggio last when it temporarily suspended acquisition pending new data. And the June 6 he returned to office with a letter sent to the Security Exchange Commission (Sec, the American Consob) in which he had given the last warning to the managers of the platform: precise data on bots, or the agreement is broken. Twitter, on the other hand, has always defended the validity of his data: “We will provide him with a truckload”, replied the social network. While in a report in recent weeks, the social network has confirmed that the bots on its platform are about 5% of the approximately 300 million accounts present. And to remove about a million fake accounts every day shortly after they are opened.
What are bots
But what are bots? Fake accounts, fake or bots, are all terms that refer to profiles controlled by a software. They have a username, a profile photo, often a bio, but behind them there are no real people but programs able to move them, often in unison, and make them perform autonomously some actions available on the platform: they publish messages, relaunch those. of others, they comment on a tweet in a coordinated way in order to exalt or discredit it, they tweet with hashtags and particular themes to make them end up among the most discussed topics.
Social
Is Twitter worth 44 billion?
by Arcangelo Rociola
It is not a new phenomenon. Analysts have been studying their functions and behaviors since 2012, when the first reports on the existence of these coordinated account networks were published, identifying some tens of millions, about 9% of the total profiles on the platform.
Why it is important to establish their number: the Mdau
For Musk without certain data it is impossible to establish the true commercial value of Twitter. Everything revolves around the concept of Two (English acronym for monetizable daily active user), that is, the monetizable daily active users. In other words, human users, not software. Only the number of monetizable active users can give a precise estimate of the value of Twitter, because only they are the ones who become advertising targets for advertisers. And social media monetize above all from the advertisements sold.
Musk’s suspicions and the role of an Italian data scientist
On Friday night, just before the deal broke, Musk shared a few tweets. One of these, the latest in chronological order, is a comment on a post by an Italian analyst, Andrea Stroppa. In recent weeks, Stroppa has supported Musk’s theses with his own research. He went so far as to speculate that fake Twitter accounts were between 12 and 14%, publicly winning the acclaim of Tesla’s number one.
Why Musk stops (for now) on Twitter
by Riccardo Luna
In his last thread last night, however, he analyzed thousands of comments against Musk posted on Twitter responses to an article about the entrepreneur. 9,100 comments, all of insults. Stroppa’s suspicion is that those comments were coordinated. That someone had activated this bot against. “Interesting. Who is behind this bot attack?” Musk commented in response to Stroppa.
Comment that sparked the fantasies of his followers who accused the media, social media and the American government of wanting to put a spoke in the wheel for the entrepreneur. Musk wanted to make Twitter the social media of free speech and absence of censorship, confident that his power was something that went beyond economic value.
Now all that remains of his project is a bitter legal battle that is only in its infancy. And many believe that behind this turnaround there are economic issues as Twitter has lost about 40% of the value that Musk had attributed to it with his offer last April since last April.