Well....I'll make this simple, and lay in why Elon Musk says it matters.
Twitter 'arrived' in March of 2006. To get it 'birthed-up'.....the crew had start-up capital. Great things were expected.
It had to be free....no subscription....no entry fee. What the team relied upon, to get the out of the start-up capital 'trap'.....was that new accounts would come and multiple.
At some point (I would take a guess around 2012)...'Marvin' and 'Frank' (just two guys responsible for profits and accounts in Twitter)....had a meeting. They were getting to a point where start-up capital ought to end, and basically admitting that the monthly advertising was not sustaining the cost of operation.
Lets also admit this....the goal was to enter into the public stock domain around late 2013.
The relationship here? Well....the company was based out of 'Silicon Valley'....there were California taxes in the mix, and they were bringing in a lot of engineers with hefty salaries.
Enter through the door 'Mandy'.
'Mandy' sat with 'Marvin' and 'Frank' and finally said....she knew how to solve the accounts and profit thing. She drew up a simple Einstein-like theory....from her days in college.....which was rocket-science in terms of vision. If you had X-number of accounts...particularly with 15-to-30 year olds....advertisers would be interested, and they'd pay more.
What 'Mandy' was getting to.....just make fake accounts (bots). Plus you could aim them at certain parts of society....make them pro-political, and advertisers would flock to the company.
A 'backdoor' group was created...where a dozen-odd people sat, and all they did each day...bring to 'life' 10,000 new Twitter members.
November 2013 came.....SEC documents turned in, and Twitter was now supervised. In reality, it meant nothing.
Eventually, someone would ask about the bot issue, and you'd do a 'cleansing'....dump 1-million here and there. But the backroom staff still did their work.
Eventually, you'd expand this overseas....into the Philippines, France, UK, Iceland, and Germany.
Bots sold advertising people into a feel-good routine.
Worldwide, it's figured around 450-million Twitter accounts exist today. How many of the 450-million are fake or bot-like? Anyone's guess....but Twitter wanted everyone to think around 5-percent.
Things were fine....the SEC was stupid....advertisers couldn't figure out the truth....and the board was happy.
What made no sense? Well....on public stock....the company had zero dividends....ever. Stock quietly went up a notch each month....a few cents here and there. Life went on.
All this advising income did....was sustain the CEO, the board, the cost of operation, California taxation, and a image. You sold that image politically....because people believed it was a pro-Democrat feeling. In 2016....that came to an end.
Things were still progressing....until the 'evil' Elon Musk came onto the scene earlier this year. Elon knew something (maybe from the inventor of Twitter, or perhaps by just looking at data). So Elon decided to bluff Twitter management into a 'pocket'. He would buy them at $44-billion....but he wanted them to clear the air about bots. He wanted access to certain data sets, and the board wasn't going that far.
So this past week....Elon said enough. The bot estimate of 5-percent is believed to be wrong. How much? That's the question.
In Germany, there's supposed to be around 4.9-million Twitter accounts. If 5-percent were bots....it'd mean that 250,000 are bots. Just me guessing...I think it's more in Germany that are bots....probably upwards to 20-percent....meaning one-million German Twitter accounts are fake.
If the German authorities got into the middle of this and found that to be true....they'd ask for some truth-commission...then ask what the bots were doing.
If you drove out the bots entirely? Well....advertising would drop dramatically....engineers would be terminated.....the stock price would drop, and California tax revenue for Galvin (the Gov) would be missing.
I'm guessing here....but 'Marvin' and 'Frank' have long since left, and 'Mandy' is probably retired at age 38 with a $12-million pot of money....sipping French wine, and giggling over stupid bot idea.
I should state this too.....'Mandy' also sold the bot idea in principal to various Democratic groups after the 2016 election, and got them into bot-voters. But that's a more complicated and intense story. Lets save it for another day.
So how this ends?
Going into court? No. The board can't admit that there's two lists of members....the real and bot groups.
The stock? In six months....it ought to be lingering at $27....way down from the $54 of six months ago.
Then I suspect after November 2022....the evil 'Elon' will head up a new social media, and charge you $4.99 (a month) to be a regular member....promising it to be bot-free. For some odd reason....people will start to drift away from Twitter-bot, and enter the evil empire of Elon.
Usually, in these type of stories....there's some princess rescued....a castle brought down....and some peasant people rescued. But this just isn't that type of 'legend' story. It's just about bots, and how they saved, then destroyed a company.
