Almost a million Twitter users may have deactivated their accounts since Elon Musk takeover

When business magnate Elon Musk took over microblogging platform Twitter, users and celebrities alike threatened to deactivate their accounts, stating their dissatisfaction about the new management. Many of these users eventually realize that this is easier said than done, as they often fail to follow through with their threat and continue using Twitter like they usually do (much like how some people in the U.S. say they'll move to Canada).

This doesn't seem to be the case any more, however, as many people have reportedly deactivated their account since the "Chief Twit" took over.

According to new data by Bot Sentinel, a firm that tracks inauthentic behaviour on Twitter, the social media network has already seen 877,000 deactivations between October 27 and November 1. In the same timeframe, a further 497,000 accounts were suspended. Adding these numbers up, Twitter has lost almost 1.4 million users.

To arrive at this number, Bot Sentinel looked at the proportion of users they analyse who had deactivated their accounts or had been suspended after Musk’s takeover. They then applied that percentage to Twitter’s overall user base, which is currently at 237 million.

A deactivation is when a user intentionally shuts down their account. A suspension, on the other hand, is when Twitter removes accounts for inactivity, inauthenticity, or violation of site rules.

A separate analysis by research group Network Contagion Research Institute found that bad actors are trying to test Twitter's limits after it has been acquired by Musk. For example, the use of the "n-word" on the platform increased by almost 500% in only 12 hours since Musk announced he had taken over Twitter.

Christopher Bouzy, Bot Sentinel’s founder, predicts that the growing hostile environment on Twitter will eventually promote user attrition. "I believe if users continue to deactivate their accounts en masse, it will become a significant problem for the platform," he states. "If left-leaning and marginalized people leave the platform, Twitter will not differ from Parler or Truth Social."

Source: MIT Technology Review