I had a FASCINATING discussion with @brakskellington re: why Twitter didn't crack down on QAnon earlier.

Michael works in the online-ad industry and explains... just a BUNCH of stuff from angles I had never considered.

You should click in, but if you refuse, I'll summarize ITT. https://twitter.com/brakskellington/status/1352422660974764035

So here's the nub of it: there's a long-running problem where a LOT of impressions and clicks for online ads come from bots.

Some ad-buyers don't even *know* about this, with results that can sound... well, they can sound a bit like a scam. https://twitter.com/brakskellington/status/1352424515020726274?s=20

"Scam" is a bit of a strong word to use, perhaps (though IIRC Michael Lewis, author of "The Big Short," has written about this problem in terms that also come juuuuuuuust short of calling this arrangement a scam, so at least I'm in good company). https://twitter.com/brakskellington/status/1352425058589880330?s=20

But to the extent that advertisers DO know about the botnet problem -- and most do, especially (I presume!) as we get away from the advertising minnows and start swimming with the advertising behemoths -- it's in Twitter's interest to crack down on botnets.

In doing so, however, they incur a certain cost: botnets were GOOD for advertising revenue because they generated views and clicks, even if fraudulent.

Where are those impressions going to come from when you get rid of the botnets? https://twitter.com/brakskellington/status/1352425951901196291?s=20

Well, as @dappergander has repeatedly shown, Q people act a LOT like a botnet. They mash that RT button over and over. They're very dedicated users, on here for hours a day (no judgment on THAT point, TBH).

And, critically, they see a ton of content. And a ton of ads.

So their impressions -- even if they're almost never clicking on ads, because, y'know, almost none of us EVER click an ad on purpose -- have real, tangible value to Twitter.

Their impressions sell ads.

So: is it in the PUBLIC interest to crack down on QAnon? Yep. Always was.

Would a QAnon crackdown have advanced Twitter's stated goals re: users having healthy conversations?

Yep. Always would have.

Would it have nuked some of Twitter's best inventory without replacing it?

Also yes.

Now... probably a lot of you are reading this and going "DUH!"

But I genuinely did not understand that there even WAS a business case *not* to nuke the QAnon users, let alone what that case was, until @brakskellington explained it to me slowly and patiently, using tiny words.

So, if you were in the same boat, I hope you're out of it now!

UPDATE: Michael adds a note on how most text-based social media ads are sold -- namely, at a certain price per thousand impressions (for Twitter it's usually $3.50 but it goes up as you target a more precise demographic).

Purge 100K dedicated customers & you're losing $$$ daily.