Twitter’s German-listed shares slumped as much as 8 per cent on Monday, the first trading day after it permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account late on Friday.
According to the company, the suspension of Trump’s account, which had more than 88 million followers, was due to the risk of further violence, following the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday.
It was the first time Twitter banned a head of state. The ban sparked a worldwide controversy over the influence of tech giants on free speech and democracy.
“Expect slight user decline, though engagement erosion is a bigger question”, Berstein analysts wrote.
Meanwhile Millions of users of the messaging platform, WhatsApp across the globe, including Nigerians, have started exiting the platform following a new privacy policy recently announced, though to take effect from on February 8.
This privacy policy, which many users of the Facebook-owned WhatsApp consider offensive, has triggered a mass exodus of subscribers to other less popular but equally-functional platforms such as Telegram and Signal.
The new privacy policy allows WhatsApp and Facebook to share user information with businesses and third-party service providers that transact on the platforms.
In 2014, Facebook acquired the instant messaging platform for $19 billion – the largest acquisition by the social media giant to date.
According to The Global State of Digital in 2019 report, WhatsApp is the most used social media platform in Nigeria. At least, 85 per cent of Nigeria’s 24 million active social media users are on the platform.
Since its release about two days ago, the policy has been generating reactions from users in Nigeria and other parts of the world. But that is coming from those who took their time to read the terms as many users hurriedly click ‘Agree’ without reading the content of the agreement.
Though WhatsApp has been collecting data from its users since its inception, the new policy is about integrating the database with Facebook, which could on a future date be used for targeted advertising and political campaigns.
