Reportedly, business is going quite well for Twitter in regard to the number of new users in the wake of the social media titan being purchased by Elon Musk, as explained by the billionaire businessman himself, even though a large number of the platform’s advertisers have started to shy away from the titan because of attacks from activist groups.
As shared by Musk, investor slides state that the current daily influx of new users has peaked at two million, while “user active minutes per day” has likewise climbed to sit at eight billion. The company currently sits at over 250 million monetizable active users per day, explained the CEO. All three metrics have far surpassed the company’s records under previous leadership.
Musk has recently been trying to fight the plague of account impersonation by selling a subscription for verification at a price point of $8 per month, a policy that has repeatedly been taken down before being once again brought back. The slides stated that the number of reported impersonations went up directly after he took control of the company before quickly dropping back down.
The slides also highlighted that instances of hate speech impressions have been at an all-time low since Musk acquired the platform. Musk, who made the claim that he purchased Twitter in order to promote free expression and peaceful dialogue across the entire political spectrum, unveiled this past week that the company still holds the definition of hate speech as “the same list of terms” put in place prior to the purchase.
Musk also teased quite a few new offerings out of his “Twitter 2.0,” including better video content, encrypted direct messages, long-form tweets, and entertaining advertisements.
The various account impersonations and Musk’s recent endorsement of a few conservative figureheads have sparked extreme ire throughout many left-wing nonprofits, many of which chose to attack and pressure advertisers to halt their work and relationship with the massive social media company. Quite a few organizations put their seal of endorsement on a letter to the executives of many major advertisers claiming that “extremists” think the takeover is “a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing, and racist language and imagery,” including “clear threats of violence against people with whom they disagree.”
As explained via a report put forth by left-wing group Media Matters, who signed the letter, as many as 50 of the top 100 prime advertisers on the platform have “either announced or seemingly stopped” their campaigns across the platform. These companies have dropped $2 billion on advertising using the platform over the course of the last two years.
“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” Musk stated this past month. “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”
