Twitter lost a million users since it went to Musk

An estimated 877,000 users closed their accounts six days after Elon Musk owned Twitter.

The Sentinel bot, which tracks activity on Twitter, said that 877,000 accounts were disabled between October 27 and November 1, while about 497,000 other accounts were also locked by Twitter during this period. These numbers are twice as high as the normal statistics.

Outside Twitter headquarters. Photo: AP.

"We believe the reason is that many people are not happy with Musk's acquisition of Twitter. They locked their accounts in protest," said Christopher Bouzy, founder of Bot Sentinel.

Manoel Ribeiro, a scholar at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute, said many people are looking to leave Twitter and switch to other social networking platforms. Twitter and billionaire Elon Musk have not commented on the information.

Bouzy said the number of accounts blocked by Twitter has also increased sharply in part because many users are experimenting with what can be posted on the platform. "It looks like they intentionally violated Twitter's rules to gauge the limits of free speech under Musk," he said.

The number of hate posts has increased after Twitter blocked the legal and information security team from accessing controls. Only 15 people now have access to the post removal tool, compared to hundreds in the past.

Savvas Zannettou, an associate professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, warns this is the first sign of more serious problems with Twitter in the future. "This could be the beginning of a big exit from the platform," he said. As of the end of the second quarter of 2022, Twitter has 238 million daily users.