If they are selling ad space based on knowingly false numbers then that likely is a criminal act. Across state lines too. Where’s Merrick Garland and his heroes? Oh yeah right. He’s too busy going after trespassers whom his cops let into the building.
It is flat out fraud when twitter says ad costs is per hit and the hit is a bot twitter created.
For those that might not know, a ‘bot’ (short for ‘robot’) is simply a piece of software that runs on twitter’s computing systems and mimics a user. A bot might be programmed to post messages or respond to another post or simply hit ‘Like’. This increases the count of activities on twitter’s web site and people get charged advertising costs for each activity a bot is responsible for creating.
Advertising on the web is usually per ‘hit’, or page view. Someone goes to a web page and an ad is shown to them, and the advertising customer is charged, say, 4 cents for that customer viewing that advertisement. So, a bot is theft through fraud because the advertiser is charged 4 cents for showing an advertisement to a robot and not a human.
The board members and CxO should be held personally liable for this and have to pay back shareholders for their losses. They invested in a company that lied about their performance/financials.