US Business

If Twitter’s lawsuit over Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout bid ever reaches trial, the case will likely center on a ubiquitous and often unloved technology: bots.

The information Twitter has or has not provided on its tally of fake or spam accounts is Musk’s stated reason for backing away from the deal — a move that prompted the firm to sue him this week.

Here’s a closer look at the complications around bot accounts, and how they would be key in deciding the case.

– Good bot, bad bot –

At a basic level, “bots” are software programs that do automated tasks online, often with the aim of emulating how people behave.

Twitter tolerates some automated uses, like an account that tweets every time the Hubble space telescope crosses the sky over a given city.

But Twitter has rules about automated actions by accounts, including barring software from posting about hot topics, firing off spam, attempting to influence online conversations, and operating across multiple accounts.

The company says it wages a daily campaign against spam or fake accounts that keeps their number to less than five percent of users. 

Musk’s lawyers, in notifying Twitter on July 8 he was “terminating” the agreement to buy the company, alleged the platform made “false and misleading representations” about bots and had not provided details he needed to check its assertions. 

– Thorny question –

Determining the number of bots on the site is a bit of an art because the tally is determined in part by Twitter’s internal definitions and the workers who apply the rules.

While some cases are clear cut violations, some can require the judgement of people who have to weigh various facts.

“People can disagree on what should be considered a bot or a spam account,” said Edwin Chen, a former Twitter employee, who is now CEO of content moderation firm Surge AI. 

The figure would also be tricky for an outsider like Musk to confirm because the bot weeding process can include checking IP or email address or other sensitive user data.

“I think a lot of people, not even just my former colleagues but people just generally within the tech industry, know that this is a thorny, thorny question,” Chen added.

Twitter’s lawsuit, which urges a court to force Musk to honor his buyout offer, could result in a trial or settlement talks that would need to plunge into the finer points of things like the firm’s bot definitions and policies.

Musk’s lawyers said he has already asked for but had not received “Twitter’s methodology and performance data” about finding and suspending spam and fake accounts.

“In short, Twitter has not provided information that Mr. Musk has requested for nearly two months,” the lawyers wrote in laying out the argument for aiming to abandon the deal.

– The deal with Twitter –

Speculation has mounted that the bot issue — with its tricky, detailed and case-by-case aspects — is just a convenient route for Musk to abandon or renegotiate his proposal.

Yet, bots are a problem online.

“Bad actors have nearly infinite resources and incentives to use bots for nefarious purposes,” said Tamer Hassan, co-founder and chief of cybersecurity firm HUMAN.

Bots are used in more than three quarters of security and fraud incidents that happen online, from spreading socially divisive posts to snapping up hot concert tickets and hacking, Hassan told AFP. 

Also, Twitter makes its money from ads, and marketers pay for reaching people, not software.

Thus “advertising to bots isn’t going to have a good close rate because bots don’t buy products,” analyst Rob Enderle told AFP previously.

If advertisers are paying Twitter fees based on how many people see ads, and those numbers are inflated due to bots in the online audience, they are being overcharged, Enderle added.

If Twitter has way more bots than it is letting on, its revenue could plunge when those accounts are exposed and closed.

Or as Musk’s lawyers put it, Twitter’s true daily users who can be shown advertising are “a key component of the company’s business, given that approximately 90 percent of its revenues come from advertisements.” 

Baseball is America’s national pastime, but in New York, a cricket club is celebrating 150 years not out thanks to the city’s large immigrant communities.

Staten Island Cricket Club (SICC) is the oldest continuously active cricket club in the United States, with matches played there every year since it was founded in 1872 by British armed forces officers and Wall Street traders.

Along the way, it has hosted some of the game’s greats, including Don Bradman, Geoffrey Boycott and Garry Sobers.

“There’s plenty to be proud of in a non-cricket-playing country to have a club that has withstood the test of time. It’s not been easy,” says 92-year-old president Clarence Modeste.

SICC has survived two world wars, the loss of a clubhouse to fire and the Covid-19 pandemic. It has also navigated rudimentary facilities and indifference from local officials. 

Before each match at the club’s home ground of Walker Park, city-run since the 1930s, players nail down a canvas matting wicket and hammer in stumps.

Grass several inches high in the field forces batters to lift the ball rather than hit the groundstrokes that many of the club’s 80-odd members learned to play as youngsters.

“You can’t hit a lovely cover drive. It won’t go anywhere,” laments 66-year-old Charu Choudhari, who nonetheless travels two hours from his home on Long Island to play.

A footpath marks the boundary while shots that hit the leaves of a large tree are deemed a six. Bowling is only allowed from one end due to homeowners worried about well-struck balls hitting their property.

“This is the sort of handicap one faces,” says Modeste, who hopes to persuade the parks department to erect netting 40 feet (12 meters) high so both ends can be used.

When Trinidad and Tobago-born Modeste joined SICC in 1961, some 90 percent of members were white — mostly British, with some Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans.

Today, the overwhelming majority are people of color from cricket-loving countries in South Asia such as India and Sri Lanka, and the Caribbean.

For many, the club is a connection to home.

“It means everything to me. Whenever I play cricket, I remember always my country,” says 50-year-old Sunil Nayyar, who moved to the United States from New Delhi 30 years ago.

– T20 World Cup –

The club has one or two American-born players, like Staten Island native Billy Teague, who joined recently. The 60-year-old wishes he’d known about cricket when he was growing up.

“I thought it was no different than croquet. It just seemed like a weird, strange game and now I’m in love with it,” he says.

Cricket was popular in the United States in the 1800s but declined as bat-and-ball cousin baseball soared in popularity, partly because it was quicker.

Today, there are just 200,000 cricketers in America, according to governing body USA Cricket, representing less than one percent of the population.

Officials hope interest will be spurred when the United States hosts matches in the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.

SSIC has a youth program for players aged five to 18, and Modeste believes cricket will only grow in America when it is introduced into schools.

“As long as cricket is replenished mainly with migrants rather than with homegrown stock, I think it will be extremely difficult to find the success that many of us have dreamt of for the game,” he says.

New York City boasts the country’s liveliest scene, with an estimated 100 matches taking place every weekend during warmer months.

SICC is at the heart of it. As well as competing in domestic leagues, the club welcomes sides from abroad and conducts its own tours overseas.

Batting great Bradman was part of an Australian team that played at Walker Park in 1932 while Sobers led an international XI there in 1988.

This weekend, SICC will celebrate its sesquicentennial year with a plaque unveiling and a match against a Philadelphia team.

Modeste attributes the club’s longevity to stable beginnings and international recognition.

“The club is known around the world and we continue to make sure that happens,” he says.

The US Secret Service, the law enforcement agency that protects the president, deleted agents’ text messages sent during the January 6 Capitol riot, a government watchdog said in a letter published Thursday.

Joseph Cuffari, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress in the letter dated Wednesday that his office has had difficulties obtaining records from the Secret Service from January 5 and 6, 2021.

The messages could be crucial to the House of Representatives and Justice Department investigations into whether Donald Trump and his close advisors encouraged the deadly insurrection by the former president’s supporters at the US Capitol, which aimed to prevent the certification of Democratic rival Joe Biden as the winner of the November 2020 election.

Secret Service agents were with Trump during the day of the uprising, and were also with vice president Mike Pence, who went into hiding at the Capitol after pro-Trump rioters called for him to be hanged.

On June 29 a former White House staffer told the House January 6 investigation that Trump had attempted to force the Secret Service to take him to the Capitol to join his supporters on that day. 

“The Department notified us that many US Secret Service (USSS) text messages, from January 5 and 6, 2021, were erased as part of a device replacement program,” Cuffari wrote in the letter first reported by The Intercept and later published by Politico.

“The USSS erased those text messages after OIG requested records of electronic communications” for a review of January 6, he said, referring to the Office of the Inspector General.

In addition, he said, the department has stalled on providing other records to the OIG.

In a statement, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi rejected the inspector general’s allegation.

He said the agents’ phones were being wiped as part of a planned replacement program that began before the OIG requested the information six weeks after the insurrection.

“The Secret Service notified DHS OIG of the loss of certain phones’ data, but confirmed to OIG that none of the texts it was seeking had been lost in the migration,” he said.   

Cuffari’s letter was addressed to the leaders of the Senate and House Homeland Security Committees. 

The chairman of the House Homeland Security committee is Representative Bennie Thompson, who is also the chairman of the House committee investigating January 6.

Their investigation has sought to show that Trump knowingly incited the insurrection as an attempted “coup.”

The Secret Service has been criticized for not adequately anticipating the threat of the violent action by armed Trump supporters on January 6.

Trump had made a senior Secret Service official at the time, Tony Ornato, his personal deputy chief of staff.

Ornato has denied the account given to the January 6 committee by former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson that Trump tried to force the Secret Service to drive him to the Capitol as his supporters massed at the building, the seat of the US legislature.

But other then-White House officials have backed Hutchinson’s story.

When President Joe Biden arrives in Saudi Arabia Friday, the first clues about his visit will be visible on the airport tarmac, where US leaders have received markedly different welcomes.

Following Biden’s oft-cited comment about making Saudi a “pariah”, here is a look at how the Saudis have greeted some of his predecessors during the ups and downs of a stormy bilateral relationship.

– A kiss for George W. –

George W. Bush waited until the last year of his term to visit the kingdom, then came twice in the span of four months, pressing for more oil output as energy prices skyrocketed. 

King Abdullah greeted Bush warmly at the airport in May 2008, showing no signs of the tensions that had roiled their 2002 meeting at Bush’s Texas ranch –- when Abdullah, then crown prince, threatened to storm out over disagreements about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

After Bush and his wife Laura descended from Air Force One, Abdullah kissed the president on both cheeks, in a traditional Arab greeting, and a military brass band played the American national anthem. 

But the Saudi leadership refused to give ground on oil. Much like today, Saudi officials said they did not believe there was a supply shortage and that market fundamentals were “sound”. 

– Obama’s downgrade –

President Barack Obama first came to Riyadh in 2009, less than five months after being sworn in, for a quick stop ahead of a much-hyped speech in Cairo intended to rehabilitate Washington’s image in the Muslim world after the Bush years. 

The visit was partly symbolic. Obama, following the customary cheek-kissing and anthem-playing, was publicly seeking the advice of Saudi Arabia — home to the holiest sites in Islam — before reorienting American engagement with the region. 

But Obama was also trying to coordinate a strategy to address Iran’s nuclear programme and looking to advance normalisation between Arab countries and Israel, said Dan Shapiro, then-senior director on the National Security Council. 

On the latter question, “Abdullah was not receptive, and he made clear that he was not prepared to make any significant moves in that direction”, said Shapiro, now with the Atlantic Council think tank. 

US-Saudi ties grew chilly under Obama as the 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear programme took shape. 

For a visit in 2016, towards the end of Obama’s term, King Salman –- who took power the previous year after Abdullah’s death –- sent the governor of Riyadh to meet him on the tarmac, and Obama’s arrival was not broadcast on state television. 

– Trump-era glow –

That greeting was a far cry from the effusive reception given to President Donald Trump, who chose Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip the following year. 

Saudi rulers lavished the Trump family with gifts, a sword dance and a fly-past of air force jets.

But the stop will forever be remembered for the viral photo of Trump, King Salman and Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi with their hands on a translucent white globe at the opening of a Riyadh-based centre to combat extremist ideology. 

The men kept their hands on the orb for nearly two full minutes, sending the internet into overdrive with parodies and memes.

“The welcome for Trump is likely to stand as the most overwhelming ever,” said Bruce Riedel, author of the 2017 book “Kings and Presidents” examining US-Saudi ties. 

The relationship suffered later in the Trump term, especially following what the Saudis perceived as Trump’s tepid response to attacks on Saudi oil facilities in 2019 claimed by Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen. 

But Riedel said Saudi leaders remain “close” to key figures from the Trump era, notably his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

– A hug for Biden? –

Unlike during the Obama era, it would be unsurprising if Biden, 79, is welcomed at the airport by King Salman, 86, who spent much of the pandemic in relative isolation and has already been hospitalised twice this year. 

The White House has said Biden will meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the context of a larger discussion with King Salman’s leadership team, but Riedel said there was a possibility the crown prince will also “be the welcome committee”. 

“The Saudis are determined that the visit is a validation of the crown prince. They control the venue,” he said. 

Riyadh dismisses the notion that Saudi leaders need a legitimacy boost from Biden, but the president can nonetheless expect to be received warmly, said Mohammed Alyahya, senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute.

“The Saudis realise that America is in a very confused time. Sometimes you hear irrational things that don’t make sense. But there are larger, more important interests at play than focusing on something like that,” Alyahya said. 

“When your friends are being incoherent, sometimes you give them a hug.”

Saudi Arabia announced Friday it was lifting restrictions on “all carriers” using its airspace, an apparent gesture of openness towards Israel ahead of US President Joe Biden’s arrival.  

The US leader welcomed the “historic” decision, the latest conciliatory move by Riyadh concerning the Jewish state, which it has refused to recognise despite intensive efforts by the Israelis to establish ties with Arab countries. 

The Saudi civil aviation authority “announces the decision to open the Kingdom’s airspace for all air carriers that meet the requirements of the authority for overflying”, it said in a statement on Twitter.  

The decision was made “to complement the Kingdom’s efforts aimed at consolidating the Kingdom’s position as a global hub connecting three continents”. 

“This decision is the result of the President’s persistent and principled diplomacy with Saudi Arabia over many months, culminating in his visit today,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in the statement, adding that Biden “commends” it.

He said the US president, who will land in Saudi Arabia for a controversial visit later Friday as part of a trip to the Middle East, “will have more to say on this breakthrough later today.”

Prior to Biden’s arrival in Israel at the start of his Middle East trip on Wednesday, Washington had hinted that more Arab nations could take steps to pursue relations with Israel, spurring speculation about whether Riyadh would alter its long-held position of not establishing official bilateral ties until the conflict with the Palestinians is resolved. 

The kingdom did not show any opposition when its regional ally, the United Arab Emirates, established diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020, followed by Bahrain and Morocco under the US-brokered Abraham Accords. 

Yet analysts have stressed that any immediate gains are likely to be incremental and that Riyadh will probably not agree to formal ties — not during Biden’s visit or while King Salman, 86, still reigns. 

Biden will travel to the Saudi city of Jeddah on the Red Sea coast Friday afternoon, despite a previous vow to treat the kingdom as a “pariah” over the 2018 murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 

He is to travel directly from the Jewish state to Saudi Arabia — becoming the first US president to fly from there to an Arab nation that does not recognise it.  

In 2017, his predecessor, Donald Trump, made the journey in reverse.  

– ‘A major change’ –

Shortly after the Abraham Accords were announced in 2020, Saudi Arabia allowed an Israeli aircraft to pass over en route to Abu Dhabi and announced that UAE flights to “all countries” could overfly the kingdom. 

Friday’s announcement effectively lifts overflight restrictions on aircraft travelling to and from Israel. 

Israel has been pushing for the overflight rights to shorten links to destinations in Asia. 

Israeli authorities also want Muslim pilgrims from Israel to be able to travel directly to Saudi Arabia. 

Currently they are required to make costly stopovers in third countries. 

There has been “a major change in Saudi thinking” concerning Israel under de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who Biden is expected to meet on Friday, said Dan Shapiro, Washington’s former ambassador to Israel. 

Prince Mohammed “and to some degree even the king himself have indicated that they see normalisation with Israel as a positive”, said Shapiro, now with the Atlantic Council. 

“They supported the Abraham Accords. Their own normalisation may take time and may be rolled out in phases, but it seems close to inevitable that it will happen.”