Published : Thursday, 19 July, 2018 at 2:04 PM, Count : 1787
Tech Desk: Twitter suspended at least 58
million user accounts in the final three months of 2017, according to
data obtained by The Associated Press. The figure highlights the
company's newly aggressive stance against malicious or suspicious
accounts in the wake of Russian disinformation efforts during the 2016
U.S. presidential campaign.
Last
week, Twitter confirmed a Washington Post report that it had suspended
70 million accounts in May and June. The cavalcade of suspensions has
raised questions as to whether the crackdown could affect Twitter's user
growth and whether the company should have warned investors earlier.
The company has been struggling with user growth compared to rivals like
Instagram and Facebook. The
number of suspended accounts originated with Twitter's "firehose," a
data stream it makes available to academics, companies and others
willing to pay for it, AP reports. The
new figure sheds light on Twitter's attempt to improve "information
quality" on its service, its term for countering fake accounts, bots,
disinformation and other malicious occurrences. Such activity was
rampant on Twitter and other social-media networks during the 2016
campaign, much of it originating with the Internet Research Agency, a
since-shuttered Russian "troll farm" implicated in election-disruption
efforts by the U.S. special counsel and congressional investigations. Suspensions
surged over the fourth quarter. Twitter suspended roughly 15 million
accounts last October. That number jumped by two-thirds to more than 25
million in December. Twitter
declined to comment on the data. But its executives have said that
efforts to clean up the platform are a priority, while acknowledging
that its crackdown has affected and may continue to affect user numbers. Twitter
said in April it had 336 million monthly active users, which it defines
as accounts that have logged in at least once during the previous 30
days. The suspended accounts do not appear to have made a large dent in
this number, which was up 3 percent from a year earlier. Twitter
maintains that most of the suspended accounts had been dormant for at
least a month, and thus weren't included in its active user numbers. Michael
Pachter, a stock analyst with Wedbush Securities, said he thinks the
purge late last year may have been part of an initial sweep of inactive
accounts that had little effect on activity or advertising revenue. But
he said he expected advertising revenue to fall 1 to 2 percent due to
the more recent purge last week, when Twitter said it was removing
frozen accounts from follower counts. He
expects the company to be upfront about the impact when it announces
quarterly earnings on July 27, and said the cleanup is good for users
and advertisers. "They're certainly doing the right thing," he said. Scott
Kessler, an analyst with CFRA who has a "sell" rating on Twitter stock,
said multiple reports and vague clarifications by executives are
creating uncertainty about what Twitter's numbers really mean. The purge activity "adds a level of uncertainty," he said. "As an analyst, I want a more genuine view of the user base." Chief
Financial Officer Ned Segal said in February that some of the company's
"information quality efforts" that include removing accounts could
affect monthly user figures. Segal offered no specifics. Six
months later, in late June, Twitter disclosed that its systems found
nearly 10 million "potentially spammy or automated accounts per week" in
the month of May, and 6.4 million per week in December 2017. That's up
from 3.2 million per week in September. The company didn't say how many
of these identified accounts were actually suspended. Following
the Post report, which caused Twitter's stock to drop sharply, Segal
took to Twitter to reassure investors that this number didn't count in
the company's user metrics. "If we removed 70M accounts from our
reported metrics, you would hear directly from us," he tweeted last
Monday. Shares recovered
somewhat after that tweet. The stock has largely been on an upswing
lately, and more than doubled its value in the past year. Twitter
is taking other steps besides account deletions to combat misuse of its
service, working to rein in hate and abuse even as it tries to stay
true to its roots as a bastion of free expression. Last fall, it vowed
to crack down on hate speech and sexual harassment and CEO Jack Dorsey
echoed the concerns of critics who said the company hasn't done enough
to curb such abuse.