According to a , Twitter makes millions of dollars from just a handful of its most notorious users . New research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) estimates that with just 10 accounts once banned from the platform, Twitter “will generate up to $19 million in ad revenue per year.”
The report examined the recent altercation of 10 accounts previously banned for “posting hateful content and dangerous conspiracies.” The accounts were restored after Elon Musk took over Twitter. The group includes a number of high-profile accounts linked to extremism and conspiracy theories, including that of influencer Andrew Tate. Daily Striker Founder Andrew Anglin, prominent anti-vaccine Robert Malone and Gateway Pandit.
To gauge their reach and engagement, CCDH analyzed nearly 10,000 tweets from these accounts over a 47-day period in December and January. According to their analysis, “tweets from the ten accounts received a total of 54 million impressions on an average day,” they write. “If you extrapolate that average over 365 days, you can expect accounts to hit close to 20 billion impressions over the course of a year.”
The report also points to several instances where ads from prominent advertisers appeared alongside offensive and inflammatory posts by those users. For example, a Prime Video ad just below a tweet from Andrew Anglin that said, “The only career a woman is actually capable of on the strength of her earnings is prostitution.” The report also highlights an NFL ad , which appeared just below a tweet with misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.
“This work confirms that Twitter ran ads next to each of the toxic accounts we examined, despite the individuals behind them being known for spreading hateful views and untruths,” CCDH writes.
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