Twitter admits overstating audience figures for 3 years | Hacker News Reader

Twitter admits overstating audience figures for 3 years

ft.com

Newsday (Long Island newspaper) did this, when they were found out it killed them. Afterwards, the paper was half the size, they couldn't get advertisers..

https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/news/ny-based-newsday%E2...

On the other hand, for twitter's main use case, do twitter user counts even matter? It's mostly just a direct channel for famous people to the mainstream media.

There's a lot of chatter on twitter about some users getting a lot of new followers in the last week. The people making the claims are generally politically right wing.

I haven't verified the numbers yet. The conspiracy theory is now that Twitter is changing hands, they're quickly ending certain practices that limit reach and influence of some individuals. Is there any truth to this? If so, how is this being done?

I did notice a lot of tweets that I believe would have been banned just a short time ago (you can guess what they're about). Is there any evidence of a policy change or change in enforcement?

It could be that reach is no longer being suppressed but another explanation is that people are now returning to the platform who previously felt like there was no point in trying to participate.

I am one of those. I never deleted my account, but with the rules (or enforcement) becoming more and more erratic, I stopped posting anything. I don't want to be ruled by blind algorithms.

But I am rethinking my decision now.

I am one of those in that using Twitter is drinking from a firehose of rage about every single thought people have ever thought.

Twitter's changing hands is unlikely to change that: tech folks I would otherwise follow are still going to insist while talking about javascript that I concern myself with issues of skin color, religion, ethnicity, sex, gender, war, etc.

Whereas I'm just here for the Svelte or whatever.

Likewise it seems many in non-right wing (either left-wing or fairly apolitical accounts) are losing users.

There is no strong reason to assume (absent any actual statement) that the hand change has had any impact yet. It’s expected to take a while before musk is actually in charge. If any twitter leader announced new plans that aligned with his views, that’s be different.

The simple explanation is that more right leaning folks feel comfortable joining Twitter and more left leaning folks want to leave Twitter.

That was Twitter’s official explanation.. and it makes sense to me.

My friends are mostly left leaning and I can confirm some expressed sentiment about no longer using Twitter.

Where are people moving?

I feel like Elon hasn't realized what realm of shit he's waded into. He thought dealing with the FTC was bad before. I think it's going to be much worse trying to take Twitter in the direction he wants to take it under EU and US government scrutiny.

I think it gives him some leverage in dealing with governments

It really doesn't. It just gives them more incentive to do something about Twitter.

Excellent.. time to grab some popcorn

Another source with more details and no paywall:

https://uk.style.yahoo.com/twitter-says-overcounted-users-ov...

This site should blacklist garbage paywalled sites.

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