Twitter’s Purge Of Fake Users Sees Drop In Regular Users As Well As Stock Value

Micro-blogging site Twitter’s recent move to purge its platform of fake users has resulted in a drop in its monthly users – a trend that could continue for a while, reports The Wall Street Journal. Coming in a day after social media-giant Facebook announced a slowdown in growth that saw its shares plummet, Twitter’s stocks on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) too tumbled down by 15 per cent.

Twitter’s active users for the month fell down by a million compared to three months ago to 335 million, with the drop in its shares being the largest for a United States company for losses in a single-day.

Twitter’s move to purge users in July saw many influential users including former United States president Barack Obama and musicians like Katy Perry (the most followed account on Twitter), Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift have their follower count drop by millions.

Twitter co-founder and chief executive officer Jack Dorsey too reported losing 200,000 followers.

However, despite all this, Twitter posted its third consecutive profit, which was attributed to momentum from advertisers.

While Twitter did initially attribute the drop to its mopping activities, it also cited the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect in the European Union recently following the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal.