After a Washington Post report last week that Twitter’s fake account purge might affect its second-quarter user numbers, Twitter’s chief financial officer said on Monday that most accounts affected by its clean-up will not be included in its metrics. In a tweet, Ned Segal explained that most of the suspended accounts were less than 30 days old or caught at sign up and therefore never counted.
Some clarifications: most accounts we remove are not included in our reported metrics as they have not been active on the platform for 30 days or more, or we catch them at sign up and they are never counted. https://t.co/nRIGE9EMcf
— Ned Segal (@nedsegal) July 9, 2018
He added “If we removed 70M accounts from our reported metrics, you would hear directly from us. This article reflects us getting better at improving the health of the service.”
On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Twitter has been suspending more than 1 million accounts a day in recent months, good news for people who have been calling on the platform to get serious about fake accounts that can potentially be used to spread misinformation. According to data reviewed by the newspaper, more than 70 million accounts were suspended in May and June, with that pace continuing in July.
But the Washington Post also cited an anonymous source who said the clean up might “result in a rare decline in the number of monthly users” in the quarter that ended on June 30. Twitter’s stock price fell more than 9% to a low of $42.46 on Monday, but has been climbing back up after Segal’s clarification. The company’s next earnings report is scheduled for July 27.
