See, you have proven your own ignorance with your example!
When you buy a home, even if you waive all contingencies, including a home inspection, if the seller fails to disclose material problems with the house, the sellers will be liable. This liability extends for years past the close of sale.
So you accidentally gave a perfect counter example as to why you are wrong.
That's exactly the problem and why Musk is going to fail at his bid. You can't just claim someone is lying, you have to prove it.
Musk has zero way of proving Twitter is lying about its bot problems. In fact, their bot case is fairly ironclad because as others have mentioned, they've been reporting on it for years and it's been implicitly assumed to be true, incl. by Musk who mentioned it as part of the reason why he was buying Twitter.
In order to prove Twitter is lying, he would need to prove that the past few years of data is falsified, provide his own data and prove his data is more accurate than Twitter.
He has to prove that they are lying AND the real number is a material change to the contract worthy of dismissing the contract.
By publicly stating that he thinks the bot problem is worse than they are saying AND that he is buying the company in part to fix the bot problem AND by waiving due diligence, Musk will have difficulty establishing that whatever new "bot number" he finds is actually a material change to the situation.
When you buy a home, even if you waive all contingencies, including a home inspection, if the seller fails to disclose material problems with the house, the sellers will be liable. This liability extends for years past the close of sale.
You have proven your own ignorance with your example!
The sellers are liable for some things, in some states, because there are laws that say they are liable for some things.
No such laws generally apply to corporate acquisition agreements.
I'm not sure you understood my comment. The point of my comment was that with respect to housing sales, sellers have responsibilities with regards to things not covered by the sales contract because the law says they do. It's so not the point as to whether they are state or federal laws (but on that note, the "federal disclosure laws" specifically only apply to the use of lead-based paint in housing built before 1978, or in other words, to less than 25% of the US housing market).
There are no similar laws that govern corporate acquisitions. If an acquisition agreement does not explicitly (or by incorporation) require a disclosure about "X" , then the lack of disclosure about "X" has absolutely no impact on the resolution of the parties' respective contractual obligations.
A home sale is often more complicated than that. In some places, you can buy a house “as-is,” meaning that effectively the seller is largely not on the hook as long as they didn’t egregiously misrepresent the condition of the house.
That's not what "as-is" means, contractually. There may be certain things that, by regulation, must be disclosed (most commonly lead pipes, asbestos, flood plain) but other than that...
In some places, you can also sell a house as "condemned" and then you have no recourse what-so-ever.
The biggest mistake he and Democrats keep making is blaming “billionaire Republicans”. It’s not Republicans it’s Democrats voting him out.
He either refuses to acknowledge that the Democrat voters themselves are rejecting his policies out of hubris or it’s a way to shame democrats by accusing them of acting like Republicans. But it didn’t work and only infuriated and calcified anti-Boudin people even more.
Democrats at the federal level better take heed. If San Francisco who is overwhelmingly Democrat will reject extreme progressive policies like Boudin’s, hopefully it means the Dems can regain some sense of rationality.
My friends and I have all made a pact that we will vote Republican until the Dems come more to the center, no matter how horrible the Republicans candidate is. That’s the only way we can change behavior is through voting, and in CA they have come to take voters for granted for decades and left California a progressive experiment gone off the rails to the point of lunacy.
I just can't imagine a world where an ousted politician (or elected bureaucrat in this case) says "wow I guess I really fucked up, I'm sorry. I'll pack my things and be out in the morning". They have to save face by blaming somebody.
Maybe it is different in the UK. John Major, 1997: "Tonight we have suffered a very bad defeat, let us not pretend to ourselves that it was anything other than what it was. Unless we accept it for what it was, and look at it, we will be less able to put it right." Ed Miliband, 2015: "I take absolute and total responsibility for our defeat. I'm so sorry for all those colleagues who lost their seats."
No, maybe this is the norm in the US, but this is not normal and we should not pretend it is.
In Canada, most defeat speeches I've watched were about the candidate mistakes, what they were proud of having accomplished, etc... Playing the blame game is pathetic.
If you want an example, Stephen Harper's concession speech in 2015 was pretty good.
Concession for a normal political defeat is one thing. In the US they don't usually blame, they do how you describe, and congratulate the opponent. Even Donald Trump did this once or twice to Ted Cruz in the primary.
A recall is specifically calling out the politician for failing badly enough to interrupt the election cycle.
> we will vote Republican until the Dems come more to the center, no matter how horrible the Republicans candidate is
That's pretty illustrative of a lot of American politics. Republicans have been moving further and further away from the center for the past six years, and have paid little price for their extremism.
> My friends and I have all made a pact that we will vote Republican until the Dems come more to the center, no matter how horrible the Republicans candidate is.
I would recommend making an exception for Republicans who deny Biden won the 2020 election. The #1 rule for voting in a democracy is: never vote for somebody who doesn't believe in democracy, because chances are you will never get to vote him out.
>My friends and I have all made a pact that we will vote Republican until the Dems come more to the center, no matter how horrible the Republicans candidate is.
This is an extremely dangerous position to take. You are literally willing to vote Hitler into office rather than a progressive?
It wasn't even close. Life isn't a movie or a video game; if you take over a building, you don't take over the government.
Even if it escalated past that point (i.e. Trump messing around) there wasn't key buy-in from several necessary parties. How in the world was it "close"?
I urge you to please watch the hearings. What has been learned in the intervening months since the coup attempt is that it was premeditated, and the insurrection at the capitol was only one facet in a multifaceted plan to end democracy in America. The narratives that have been established by pro-insurrectionists -- that it was peaceful, that is wasn't a big deal, that it was spontaneous, that it wasn't planned, that the White House wasn't involved, that there were no guns, that it couldn't have ended democracy even in the worst case -- have all been shown by the committee to be false.
How in the world was it close? You answered the question yourself: all that was missing was key buy-in from several necessary parties. Namely: Pence, several low-level elections clerks, and several secretaries of state. Republicans have been working to replace these individuals with insurrectionist since 2020, and to also change laws where they were thwarted before (see the Georgia GOP's new ability to completely take over and throw out independent county elections where they don't like the results.)
The plan would have most certainly worked if Pence had left the Capitol on Jan 6. Grassley would have taken over Pence's duties, and he would have refused to certify the election. At that point, the vote would have eventually ended up at the House, with one vote allocated per state delegation. With Republicans in the majority of delegations, they would have installed Trump as president against the will of the people, thereby ending 200+ years of American democracy.
The plan was very complex, it was thought of by very smart and powerful people, it was executed with the explicit intention of ending democracy in America by people at the highest level of government, and thankfully it ultimately failed. Yet, it almost succeeded and we must take note that they only had 2 months to prepare. Next time they will have had 4 years. So please, for the love of country, watch every second of the 1/6 committee hearings. Please.
Thank you for acknowledging that it wasn't close. It's awful what's transpired but unnecessary and breathless rhetoric will do us a disservice when the next, worse event occurs.
Even if the vote was delayed the legal system isn't an ethereum smart contract. Congress and presumably the supreme court would get involved to reverse the decision, or worse, have something similar to a civil war.
What legal theory exactly would lead to the outcome you describe. After the Congress certifies the vote, that’s it. Constitutionally, the process is done. The Congress can’t reverse it because they are the ones who would have made it happen. How would congress undo that? By taking it to court? Well that’s a separation of powers issue. Even if they were to overturn the result, well now SCOTUS is accused of interfering with the election as they did in 2000. I mean… no matter how you slice it, such an event would destroy democracy. How do you have another free and fair election after that?
At the point where 50% of the Congress is voting against democracy, and the people are assaulting the Capitol, it strikes me as naive to expect institutions like scotus to save us at long last.
If you value American democracy, 2024 is the last stand. Sorry you feel this perspective is breathless, but also you don’t seem to have a grasp of the severity of what happened. Which is why I’m imploring you to watch.
If you're telling me there's no recourse through congress or the supreme court around a delayed vote that's a serious flaw in the system. If course I'm not claiming the system is without flaws.
Even then, what occurs four years later? Or even a few months later? He wouldn't have enough leverage to translate that into continued (real) power.
It’s not just a delayed vote, it’s there is no recourse to a certified election. Once a president elect is certified, they are as good as inaugurated. That’s why 1/6 was so important.
The plan was to use the delay to kick the process into something favorable for Republicans, and to use fraudulent slates of electors to do so.
A certified presidential election has no review for good reason. The certification is in fact the election review process. All grievances are supposed to be settled by the Congress at that time. SCOTUS has no say over this process because if they did, that would take power away from the Congress, which would be unconstitutional.
As to what happens after that? See Hungary. See Russia. See any other country that has transitioned from democracy to autocracy. Elections will be held, it the results will be known ahead of time.
> I'll guess we'll see what happens in a few years.
No, the time to shape what happens in 2024 is now. This is why I am imploring you to pay close attention to the hearings. Action in 2024 will be too late.
It would take more than invading a building to take over the US. Give me a break. So much delusional thinking. You probably thought all that be about Trump and Russia was true as well even though it was proven to be all fake.
The number one question you need to ask yourself right now is do you value democracy? If the answer is yes, as a citizen of these United States you are obligated to watch the 1/6 hearings, and to learn everything the committee has learned.
If you want, I’ll be your pen pal during the 1/6 hearings. I’d like to hear your thoughts about the evidence presented, and if that changes your feelings about 1/6. Let me know I’ll give you my email.
I implore you to watch the hearings because you are using very strong language like “delusional” and "deranged", yet you don’t seem to be up to date on the facts relating to 1/6; you are under the impression that the totality of the coup attempt was seizing the Capitol building. That is not true. The 1/6 hearings will tell you exactly how they would have succeeded, and it’s far more insidious than an insurrection.
You are right it would take far more than occupying a building. It would take a conspiracy between state legislatures, state secretaries of state, paramilitary groups, the DOJ, the DOD, and it would have to reach as high as the White House and POTUS. Unfortunately for the USA, that's just what happened here.
(Just to head off an anticipated response, yes I understand the connotation of a conspiracy theory, but conspiracies happen and when they do they are hard to keep quiet if they are far ranging, as I'm alleging this conspiracy was. The coup plot has not been kept quiet, which is how I'm able to assert these points before the 1/6 committee has held their hearings. Everything I said has been reported already. I mean, just watch recently indicted Peter Navarro explain the whole plot live on national TV. They even had a codename for their plot: "The Green Bay Sweep").
But don’t take my word for it, the 1/6 committee will prove all of this in the coming weeks. All I’m saying is watch the hearings today and through June. You owe it to your country if you value democracy.
The Mueller Report substantiated most of it, the Senate Intel Committee Report Vol 5 substantiated collusion when it found that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had been transferring campaign data to a Russian intelligence officer.
> The plan was very complex, it was thought of by very smart and powerful people
I watched the hearing, I mostly agree with you except for this part. It seems to me there were a confluence of factors colliding. The plan was not thought of by very smart and powerful people, it was a cockamamie legal spiel on the fringe cooked up by one law prof. The former president, true to his method of decision making, said essentially, Yeah, let's go with that, why not?
Meanwhile, there exists pockets of hard right militias, members of which have para-social relationship with Mr. Trump's twitter feed. They thought he was asking, ordering, them to come to the Capitol. It was "planned" like, "she was definitely winking at me, she wants me to ask her to the prom".
I keep in perspective a sense of skepticism, this is a trial with no advocate for the other side. Mr. Trump cannot be at the same time a clownish buffoon as well as an evil genius. But, the opportunity makes the man.
A lot of people in the US would also be completely wrong. Progressives != communist and if anyone seriously thinks people in the Mainstream of the Democratic party are actually communist they are insane.
I’ve been using my windows 7 desktop from 2012 until the beginning of this year. I had no particular need to upgrade but thought what the hell why not. I could have happily continued using it for the next few years. In fact I didn’t dismantle it and am now compiling on it.
I disagree. I think it’s the opposite, Twitter should be providing this data and it’s pretty straightforward. Not providing it or pretending to provide it seems like a way to get out of the sale but leaving open a way to sue him for breach of the sale.
You don’t have to send the databases over to comply. You can give on-premises access to your data to Musk representatives and let me make their own queries to satisfy themselves. It’s not hard.
I can't even. The potential privacy violations are the same whether you're giving the database to the other party or letting the other party come to your premises to have sufficient access to the database. No wait, I take that back: they might see (very slightly more) stuff by walking on-site.
It's the data being requested that's a privacy violation, not the place where that data is viewed.
Twitter owns the data, stop acting like it is HIPPA data. Completely unsure where you are getting this PII concern from. They could change their TOS and release everything in a plain text file if they so pleased.
It is 100% legal and ok for them to look at every piece of information they have about every account and analyze it for bot activity, or allow Elon's team to look at the same data.
Secondly, I'm specifically responding to GP's assertion that letting people access the databases on-prem would make any privacy concerns go away. I'm expressing no opinions on the matter of the first place of if those privacy concerns are warranted.
Thirdly, at this point, I would personally be highly skeptical that an NDA would actually provide any meaningful protection when Musk is the one signing it. His recent actions indicate to me a very high disregard for any contractual obligations he enters on, in the apparent belief that he will face zero material repercussions for anything he violates.
Thanks for correcting my spelling. But fundamentally there is no problem with anyone looking at the data with Twitter's blessing.
The comment you were referring to says "because that data includes a ton of PII."
But PII isn't a concern here. Unless we're talking about sharing usernames and passwords, there aren't really any protections in Twitter's TOS for the information you willingly provide to them.
Assuming the data includes that of Europeans, then there is a problem: users must be aware of how their data is to be used from the beginning (and must be able to opt out of data use at any time), and that data usage must be minimal. Most companies have rules against over-sharing PII between different departments, let alone sharing that data with people external to the business.
PII doesn’t just mean usernames and passwords (which the OP seemed to suggest is the case). It’s anything — or any combination — of data that could be associated with someone and identify them.
I live in the EU and Twitter has my data, any handling of that data to a new unspecified 3rd party needs to fall under GDPR guidelines. Musk can't just go to Twitter HQ and look at my data, it's illegal.
I own my data, Twitter is merely handling it. Stop with this presumption that data is Twitter's. Even California has similar provisions on data privacy.
Assuming it is not hard (it is). Why? It’s not like Twitter is asking to be bought here. Musk voluntarily waived his rights to due diligence. Presumably his representatives have reviewed this agreement?
Agreeing to be bought doesn’t create any obligation on Twitter’s part to do anything that’s not in the contract. Especially for things that Musk has explicitly waived.
Straightforward? Against an adaptive opponent that’s constantly looking for weakness in their approach?
I don’t think automatic analysis with a 5% false positive rate and materially significant false negative rate is that easy even when the subject doesn’t have an incentive to be subversive — last time I downloaded my Twitter data, turned out they incorrectly thought I understood Indonesian(!), and incorrectly thought my interests included beer, blues, college basketball, cricket, DJs, dance, guitar, hip hop and rap, horror, ice hockey, Japan, luxury, men’s pants, men’s shoes, metal, motorcycles, NFL football, offroad vehicles, olympics, pop, “power and motorcycles” (apparently that’s a single category), rock, skateboarding, South America, sporting goods, talk radio, and wine.
Why is Twitter not providing this data? It’s a straightforward request and it’s not like he would disclose it publicly. It feels like Twitter is trying to get out of the sale by using loopholes, this is very strange.
You really think he wouldn't disclose it publicly if he thought it benefited him/for the lulz? He's exactly the kind of person who would just get the papers and publish them immediately.
Please assume good faith... Also if he was going to buy it, why would he do that? If he wasn't going to buy it, well if Twitter provides it, then he's forced to buy it so it doesn't matter if he reveals it or not.
I'm assuming that the OP is posting the question in good faith - Musk on the other hand has a track record of disclosing private information for fun/retaliation, whether or not it's legal for him to do so. "Assume good faith" doesn't mean you have to overlook everything about the situation when discussing the situation.
I'm not asserting that Musk would do anything illegal in this case, just that there's a reason the Twitter board may not want to give him private data. It's not obvious that he wouldn't disclose, either directly or implicitly, anything he's given.
Didn't he literally break the NDA with Twitter with some data they did give him? If I didn't dream that up, that alone proves there is no reason to believe in good faith on his part.
If I had to speculate: a) Twitter is not obligated to provide this data to Musk (he waived his right to due diligence, after all); b) Musk appears to be trying as hard as he can to wriggle out of the deal, whether by renegotiating to a lower sales price or finding some loophole to extricate himself for the other; and c) there's no real upside to providing the data to Musk.
If this went to court, Musk definitely has the weaker legal position here: he signed a deal that obligates him to buy Twitter at a certain price contingent pretty much only on being able to actually obtain financing, and (despite recent market events), that financing doesn't look hard for him to get.
What makes you think Twitter isn't actually providing the data, doesn't want to believe it, and -- in the end -- this is just yet more bluster from Musk?
Evaluating bots seems like the sort of thing you'd want IP addresses for; should he get an export of everyone's IP list, including journalists and other critics he's publicly feuded with?
Or Twitter management is operating in standard SV mode, aka ”if we say there are no bots, then there are no bots”
I pity the poor engineers who get the task. ”Hey Claire we need a report by tomorrow 8am that shows we only have under 5% bots. If there are more, just figure out a way to hide them. PS We are not telling you to falsify data, we are just making it very clear that these are the numbers we need, and you are indeed easily fired”
No, they disclose a metric called monetizable MAU which already excludes a vast number of bots, to the best of their ability. Then they estimate that no more than 5% of those monetizable MAU are bots. The lower that drive that number, the greater the number of genuine users that get excluded as bots.
Indians can tell based on looks, skin color, how they talk, etc. One of my close friends is Indian and you can definitely make a pretty good guess based on a factor of all of these.
I keep hearing references to this study that precipitated the famous “no more WFH Fridays” decision but I can’t actually seem to find it. Do you have a link?
If you listen to Lex Friedman, he said the thing that surprised him the most about mark zuckerberg when he met him was his overwhelming humanity and compassion. He said that part of him never comes through the media, but when he interacted with him he said it was undeniable how humane and compassionate he was.
When you buy a home, even if you waive all contingencies, including a home inspection, if the seller fails to disclose material problems with the house, the sellers will be liable. This liability extends for years past the close of sale.
So you accidentally gave a perfect counter example as to why you are wrong.