WASHINGTON – Twitter Inc suspended more than one million accounts a day inrecent months to reduce the flow of misinformation on the platform, theWashington Post reported.
Twitter and other social media platforms such as Facebook Inc have beenunder scrutiny by U.S. lawmakers and international regulators for doing toolittle to prevent the spread of false content.
The companies have been taking steps such as deleting user accounts,introducing updates and actively monitoring content to help users avoidbeing a victim to fake content.
Twitter suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June, and thepace has continued in July, the Post reported on Friday, citing data itobtained.
“It’s hard to believe that 70 million accounts were affected when Twitterhas only 336 million monthly active users (MAU),” Wedbush analyst MichaelPachter said.
Twitter’s MAU is expected to grow nearly 3 percent to 337.06 in the secondquarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
“My guess is that a large number of these suspended accounts were dormant… it should have little impact on the company,” Pachter told Reuters.
If the 70 million were mostly active accounts, the affected accounts wouldhave been “screaming bloody murder”, added the analyst.
According to a Washington Post source, however, the aggressive removal ofunwanted accounts may result in a rare decline in the number of monthlyusers in the second quarter.
“Due to technology and process improvements during the past year, we arenow removing 214 percent more accounts for violating our spam policies on ayear-on-year basis,” the company said in a blog post last month.
In May, it identified and challenged more than 9.9 million “potentiallyspammy” or automated accounts per week, compared with 6.4 million inDecember 2017.
Shares of Twitter fell marginally to $46.50 after the bell on Friday.