Darya Dugina, daughter of Alexander Dugin, was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow. Likely that the target(s) was either Alexander alone, or the pair of them together.
Sounds like Elon Musk wasn't entirely incorrect about Twitter propping up its user count with bots: https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/23/23317857/twitter-whistleblower-zatko-security-spam-safety
did anyone really question musk about that? I thought it was just widely assumed that twitter was inflating the numbers with bots. The issue with musk was, he likely never really wanted to buy twitter from the get-go, is always out to further his own brand even at the expense of his companies, and simply won't shut the fuck up.
I have no idea what he intended to do, but his one of his stated reasons for pulling out of the deal turned out to be accurate, or at least corroborated. It would be insane if executive comp is actually tied to user count and they are deliberately inflating it.
I mean he claims they incentivize growing numbers over deleting bots but I’m not seeing where he lays out if he thinks the bot are higher than stated and how and if Twitter is misrepresenting them. I wouldn’t think prioritizing growth necessarily means they are being untruthful in the fake account arena. I didn’t read the 200 page report just read a number of summations.
How would using bots to prop up user numbers not be untruthful, particularly if it’s a metric used to get a round of funding?
I'd imagine it's an ongoing battle, so the number of bots is one thing, but that would need to be compared against how many bots are removed/neutralized, etc. And what's up with those countermeasures. Depending on what those processes look like, the raw number may not mean very much.
I said this before but my take is that Twitter bots were employed by shorts to fuck with TSLA. One way to get access to the “truth” is to try and buy the company, where they have to let you see how the sausage is made. During this process, Musk said “if you are doing what I think you are, then I’ve validated my earlier suppositions, and deal’s off.” They were stupid, but legally required to entertain his offer. And they didn’t come clean with the botnet issue, hence the lawsuit.
Again just a surface look at the recaps Ive read. The whistle blower isn't claiming there are significantly more bots than Twitter has claimed, he's just said the culture was focused more on acquiring more users than deleting fake accounts. If you think about it the two things are not mutually exclusive. Twitter may actually have <5% bots AND they could also have a company culture of focusing on new business. I havent seen anything where he proves anything about the number of fake accounts with actual proof. He certainly laid out some detailed numbers for their security practices which is his expertise. It seems as far as I can tell on the subject of fake accounts he's just offered his opinion on Twitter's culture. Since the implication is huge lends itself to juicy headlines and public backlash. Just seems like everyone is jumping to the conclusion before really thinking out what is being reported.
Just about every major startup has lied through their teeth, and said "we'll break the law until we get caught" as long as it moves them along the startup path. Twitter is no different. They have ZERO motivation to kill/reduce bots. Zero. They have EVERY motivation to employ them on their own in order to show that "hockey stick" of user acquisition, because that is what gets you funding. I have zero doubt that they had a ton of bad shit going on in order to game their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). I had a number of the same investors in one of my old companies as Twitter has in theirs. They provided us with an excel sheet by which ALL WAS MEASURED. 100% KPI's. Data driven. Metrics. ZERO give-a-shit about context, just pure math. "100 users is better than 10". We set up our business to report excellent KPI's, regardless of how "real" they were. Same goes with education, or any other KPI-driven performance... it gamifies the outcomes. You THINK you're getting better education, but no, you're just cheating to get better numbers, at the expense of a better education.
Dont get me wrong Im not defending Twitter just making commentary on the reporting and reaction. Reporting and the cultural reaction is beyond fucked out for so many reasons these days I tend to over analyze and play devil's advocate when reading any story. Everybody has a slant and everyone has tribe the colors everything. Given the detailed shit he did release as far as security I have no doubt if the inner workings of the fake account/bots was exposed it'd be as bad as everyone thinks. Just not feeling in this story. Maybe this is a case of 'where there is smoke there is fire" I just wince at peoples reactions and confirmation bias in situations like this.
It depends on how egregious it is. Twitter had a deal with the FTC to not mislead the public about their privacy and security policies, which they have already violated and were fined for in 2019.
well that could have been completely avoided if he did literally the basic stuff they were asking him about at the beginning instead of walking away and refusing to ID himself. They were called on a suspicious person, and he was acting suspicious as fuck. I was expecting that video to go sideways there for a bit.
Unfortunately being suspicious a crime, and no human being should wind up in fucking handcuffs over it. See, this is why civics needs to be a pre-req in high school. The cops were feeling lazy and would rather cage a human and act like pretentious fucking assholes then say, do some actual cop shit. Which would have taken five extra minutes. The horror.
Remember to slam that head off the concrete since those mean taxpayers took away our strangling privileges.” the fact that they're screaming at witnesses to stop filming says everything you need to know. Suspended with pay.