Almost $5bn (\u00a33.8bn) has been wiped off the market value of\u00a0Twitter\u00a0after the social media service reported a drop of 1 million users following its action to delete fake and offensive accounts.<\/p>\n
Twitter\u2019s shares fell by 15% when Wall Street opened on Friday before recovering slightly to be down 16% after investors were spooked by news that the number of active monthly users fell from 336 million to 335 million over the past three months.<\/p>\n
The San Francisco-based company warned investors to expect user numbers to fall further as it took greater action to block fake and offensive accounts. The company told investors\u00a0in its second-quarter earnings announcementthat the drop in users reflected \u201cimpact from decisions we have made to prioritise the health of the platform\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are confident that this is in the best long-term interest of the platform and will enable long-term growth as we improve the health of the public conversation on Twitter,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n
Twitter said it was committed to cleaning up the site, addressing the issue of \u201cproblem behaviours\u201d such as trolling.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are proud of the tangible improvements people are seeing on Twitter,\u201d the firm said. \u201cWe believe Twitter\u2019s value as a daily utility is enhanced when the conversation on the platform is healthy and people feel safe expressing themselves freely and openly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twitter deleted more than 70m fake or offensive accounts in May and June, and has continued to delete accounts at a rate of 1m a day,\u00a0according to research by the Washington Post.<\/p>\n
The company had come under pressure from the US Congress to take action against bots and Russian-run accounts, which had been used to influence the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year Twitter admitted that\u00a0more than 50,000 Russia-linked accounts used its service\u00a0to post automated material about the 2016 US election. The company said the posts had reached at least 677,000 Americans.<\/p>\n
More than 3,800 accounts had been traced back to Russian state operatives, including\u00a0an attack on Hillary Clinton\u2019s performance in a presidential debate. Posts by one Russian state propaganda account were\u00a0retweeted by senior advisers to Trump, including his son Donald Jr.<\/p>\n
The company admitted the Russian activity on its platform \u201crepresents a challenge to democratic societies everywhere, and we\u2019re committed to continuing to work on this important issue\u201d. Many of the accounts were run from a \u201ctroll farm\u201d backed by the Russian government, it said.<\/p>\n
The 20% fall in Twitter\u2019s share price is equivalent to $6bn being wiped off its market value, which had stood at over $30bn on Thursday night. The shares recovered slightly to $36.10 at 12.30pm BST (7.30am ET).<\/p>\n
The drop in Twitter\u2019s share price comes a day after\u00a0Facebook\u2019s shares fell 19%\u00a0when it revealed it had lost 3 million users in Europe since the\u00a0Cambridge Analytica\u00a0data breach scandal and the introduction of strict EU privacy laws.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave we reached a social media tipping point? Twitter shares tumbled 18% in pre-market trading before paring losses amid a brutal selloff that mirrored Facebook\u2019s nosedive earlier this week,\u201d said Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeneral Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) seems to have had some impact on Twitter, but the main causes attributed by the company to the decline in users was not moving to paid SMS carriers and \u2018prioritising the health of the platform\u2019, which is to do with cutting out fake accounts.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cEveryone knew that Twitter was full of fake accounts \u2013 why their removal should be impacting the share price in this way is unclear \u2013 investors may be better advised to keep a check on earnings and revenue growth instead.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth Facebook and Twitter have been affected badly by fake news, fake accounts and accusations of Russian meddling. But arguably Twitter looks in better shape as the efforts to monetise the platform are working, whilst we see fundamental concerns about Facebook\u2019s advertising model.\u201d<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Almost $5bn (\u00a33.8bn) has been wiped off the market value of\u00a0Twitter\u00a0after the social media service reported a drop of 1 million users following its action to delete fake and offensive accounts. Twitter\u2019s shares fell by 15% when Wall Street opened on Friday before recovering slightly to be down 16% after investors were spooked by news …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2955"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2969,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions\/2969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}