Twitter Says Its User Numbers Weren’t Hurt by the Trump Ban

In a statement to investors on Tuesday, Jack Dorsey called 2020 “an extraordinary year,” which sells the absurdity of the year a bit short. But early 2021 brought one momentous change: The forcible removal of Donald Trump from the platform—something still not entirely accounted for in the company’s financial disclosures. But in a letter to shareholders, Twitter went out of its way to clarify “given the unusual circumstances this quarter” that user growth continued “above the historical average from the last four years” through the end of January. The company expects 20% year-over-year growth in Q1. “We are a platform that’s obviously much larger than any one topic, or any one account," Dorsey said, elaborating on this point on Tuesday's earnings call. "80% of our audience is outside the United States and we have more than 50 accounts with over 25 million followers. Conversations on Twitter every day are based on what’s happening in the world and we have proven in the past few years that if we do the work to serve the public conversation, our daily audience grows." Without explicitly mentioning Trump, Twitter mentioned Trump. New data from Apptopia supported this claim with daily user figures remaining remarkably consistent throughout January. Meanwhile, the ban seems to have had a noticeable effect on the health of the platform: Misinformation on Twitter dropped dramatically the week after Trump was removed, according to the firm Zignal Labs. While it’s still unclear what effect this will have in the long term, Twitter finished the final quarter of the year—the period directly before Trump’s removal—in a very strong position. In its Q4 earnings report, the company announced it had 192 million monetizable daily active users—the number of users it served ads—a 27% increase since the fourth quarter of 2019. Fueled by new features and improved ad products, such its Mobile Application Promotion offering, Twitter brought in $1.29 billion, up 28% year over year. The company’s stock rose slightly in after-hours trading. As Twitter has made industry-leading content moderation decisions in the last nine months, particularly ones aimed at curbing the worst impulses of Trump and other disinformation superspreaders, the question of how that will affect the platform’s user base in the long term still lingers. Twitter said in its letter to shareholders that in the lead-up to the election, some of its tweaks aimed at improving the health of political discourse on the platform—such as encouraging quote tweets and removing news feed recommendations—didn’t improve discussions and led to “small but measurable negative impact” on user growth. Nazmul Islam, eMarketer analyst at Insider Intelligence, thinks that Trump’s removal could hurt total user growth in the next quarter. “Q1 2021 might see some user growth fall off due to Twitter’s removal of accounts and defections from those who oppose the account bans,” he told Adweek. “[User growth] just might not be in the high 20s like the last couple of quarters." Islam predicts a more mild 10-20% bump. Twitter expects a dip in user growth in 2021 toward the “low double digits” after the “pandemic-related surge” subsides.

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Twitter Says Its User Numbers Weren’t Hurt by the Trump Ban

'We are a platform that’s obviously much larger than any one topic, or any one account'

Scott Nover

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