By Sheetal Sukhija, Business Sun
10 Jul 2018, 09:18 GMT+10
CALIFORNIA, U.S. - Following a report on Friday, which revealed Twitters unprecedented takedown of fake news accounts, in a bid to deal with the increasing criticism it has faced in the aftermath of the U.S. Presidential election of 2016 - Twitter has suffered a drop in stock price.
The report in the Washington Post, which was published on Friday, revealed that in the last two months, Twitter has suspended more than 70 million accounts - which is a shocking one million fake accounts suspended per day.
Following the report, The report pointed out that Twitter was targeting misinformation and had ramped up purges of fake users in May, June.
The effort by the social networking firm came after its previous similar crackdown in February, in which it aimed at wiping out bots.
However, experts raised doubts that Twitter's unprecedented takedown rate could impact user metrics for the second quarter.
On Monday, the stock tanked on concern around user growth.
The company's shares fell more than 8 percent Monday after the Friday report.
Del Harvey, Twitters vice president for trust and safety, was quoted in the report as saying that many of the accounts being suspended had not tweeted frequently, meaning their removal wouldn't significantly impact active user counts.
On Monday, analysts for Stifel wrote in a note, "With contradictory comments from The Washington Posts sources and no official comment from Twitter, it is difficult to assess the potential for a real impact to reported user metrics from the current initiative.
Adding, "In our view, there is some risk of reported user volatility due to fake and automated account removal in the near term, though the continued purge of fake accounts is clear progress for the longer-term health of the platform."
According to reports, Twitter's plunge makes for the stock's worst day since March 27 when it shed 12 percent.
However, the shares are still up 77 percent in 2018 and 136 percent in the past 12 months.
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