Twitter Shares Fall 7% Following Permanent Trump Ban (bloomberg.com) 214
Twitter shares fell 7% in pre-market trading after the social media platform permanently banned outgoing President Donald Trump. From a report: The company confirmed its decision in a blog post on Friday, saying Trump's tweets breached policies by risking incitement to violence. It cited his posts on the riots in the U.S. capital last week. It's a watershed moment for technology platforms that have faced conflicting pressures on one hand to restrict misinformation and hate speech, and defend free speech on the other. Twitter was Trump's preferred channel for amplifying attacks on his rivals, spreading conspiracies and provoking other nations during his four years in power.
Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
They lost more than 7% of their daily posts by banning the single most prolific user.
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You joke, but there's more than a kernel of truth to it. Twitter's traffic is driven by clickbait. By getting rid of one of their leading sources of clickbait, they're cutting into their revenue.
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Thank goodness the people in charge of Twitter have enough moral fiber to think further than the share price.
The stock will bounce back in a couple of days anyway.
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An average of 35 tweets per day in the last six months.
Apparently his modus operandi was to tweet then flip through cable channels to watch the response, so he must have spent many hours a day at this. Also engineering nerds will notice the feedback aspect to this: if he doesn't get the response he wants he can just tweet again. The bully pulpit aspect of the presidency is the one part of the job he actually works on and is pretty good at, but the coronavirus briefings taught him to avoid more open-ended
File this under (Score:2)
Seriously, who the fark cares? Give it 6 months and it is highly likely nobody will remember or care.
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Only an idiot thinks that banning the ultra right means that a site is automatically "left".
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Actions speak louder than words. If they had also banned the "ultra-left" then one could argue that it was a neutral move. But so far all their left wing extremists, including convicted terrorists, are still there.
Twitter doesn't ban someone for being a terrorist, but they would ban someone for coordinating attacks or inciting violence on Twitter. They ban hundreds of thousands of accounts per year for that very reason.
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I think the drop is more the assumption that there may be a lot of rage-quits from Trump supporters.
And that is likely correct in the short term at least, it remains to be seen what the long term results are.
Re: Obvious (Score:2)
Buy low, sell high.
They will buy back in when the price drops low enough. Time to make some money.
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Some prominent conservatives have already quit in solidarity or out of rage. They were trying to make a move to Parler happen but that's gone down in flames now.
The more interesting question is if 7% was what they would have lost over time after Trump left office anyway and things calmed down. Maybe it would have taken a year or two to drop off and we only noticed because it happened in one day.
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I think they're pissed off that it's only 7% drop, as it conflicts with their fervent belief of being the silent (but loud) majority.
The drop in shares however aren't directly related to popularity of the sites or number of users. The investors do not check the number of Twitter posts each morning to decide how much to buy and sell its stock for. Instead the shares undoubtedly dropped because of perception of chaos, and uncertainty causes people to want to sell.
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
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"and nothing of value was lost..."
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So does that mean Parler and Gab are getting rage-joins?
It's not rage quits, it's the ban hammer (Score:2)
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Apparently they want to be a left wing only site, which is fine. That's their choice.
And if someone wants a "whites only" restaurant or golf club, that should be their choice too, right?
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently they want to be a left wing only site, which is fine. That's their choice.
And if someone wants a "whites only" restaurant or golf club, that should be their choice too, right?
White/black is a protected class.
Being a dumbass racist "Republican" isn't.
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Apparently they want to be a left wing only site, which is fine. That's their choice.
And if someone wants a "whites only" restaurant or golf club, that should be their choice too, right?
Hmm, more like somebody starts to throw food, plates, etc. around accompanied by cursing loudly - I am pretty sure such an individual should be removed from the property immediately and it has nothing to do with "free speech" - as peacefully expressing opinions.
BTW, the guy, who told/ordered his zombie buddies, lets start to throw food, plates, forks, etc. around initially is quite at fault as well.
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Informative)
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Interstate commerce clause. It's probably misused a whole lot, but it's how the feds cracked down on the southern states insistence that their states' rights allowed them to create a second class citizenry composed of the descendents of slaves. It provided the means to have federal laws that require equal treatment of citizens to also apply to the states as well. Thus whites-only restaurants were deemed illegal and the court upheld that. Everyone was happy (well, except in the deep south), but it also le
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Which was overturned in the sixties, and you, personally, want to return to the good old days of the fifties. The 1850's, that is.
Re: Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
Europe here.
Hate to tell ya, but you ain't got a left wing.
You only got a crazy extremist right wing... and a batshit crazy extremist right wing.
Biden is more right wing than Reagan, from what I have seen. Let that sink in for a minute.
If you go any more right wing, I must take out my old-timey German voice from my country, and tell you to take DÄRR RRREICHSKRISTALLNACHTSSTIMMUNG it down a notch, Jawohl!
Re: Obvious (Score:3)
If you are actually serious then you will know that European definition of left and right don't hold in America. Europe doesn't have free speech like the USA and it has gun control. Both are part of constitution.
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Or, the stuff what is frowned upon in Europe, inflammatory and hate speech, is what makes the US political spectrum more complete, possibly even better?
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Europe doesn't have free speech
Wut? Europe isn't one single country, but at least my European country has free speech in our constitution.
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I also part of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union which is legally binding for all member states.
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No. The European idea is correct. What you know about the left is exactly what Good Germans knew about Jews in 1939.
You're an ignorant traitor.
He's talking about economics (Score:2)
But it's mostly about things like single payer healthcare, stronger environmental regulations and worker rights laws that are actually enforced. When people outside the Fox News / OAN propaganda machines say "left wing" that's what we mean.
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It's a bit early to tell what Biden will be like a president because his previous actions aren't necessarily an indicator. In politics people vote for stuff because it is politically advantageous at the time, not because it's a policy they believe in or want to pursue.
Of course he is at best what we in Europe would call a conservative, perhaps a moderate one but only time will tell.
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Biden is the exemplar of politicians of that type too. You pretty much can't find any point of debate in modern American political discussion that does not have Biden on either side of it at one time or another.
The lone exception being perhaps infinite copyright protection for Micky Mouse, and even then plagiarism does not seem to bother him personally :-).
Biden does not have an agenda and never has, he has moist finger in the air. That is both somewhat comforting and terrifying at the same time in the co
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Please. The guy's elevator stopped going to the top floor at least as early as 2008 [nytimes.com]:
Do I need to enumerate all the idiocies in the above two paragraphs? I hope, for your sake, you
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Referencing the Wash Examiner is not exactly appealing to a trusted source. Try some organization that vets their stories next time.
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you have evidence of this? They most certainly want to have a broad based market, with advertisers that want a broad based market. However Trump and the Trumpists are tarnishing the brand and scaring away the moderates, rationalists, and others who aren't of that ilk. Of course, why a rational moderate wants to be on Twitter or other social media is beyond me...
Do not confuse Trump and his discliples for merely being right of center or in the mainstream. Their view is neither right nor left but a hodge-
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I get that this is a joke but they've gone way above and beyond just banning Trump. They've been banning people who merely supported Donald Trump in massive ban waves as well. It's unknown how many accounts have been banned in the wake of Trump being banned but by some estimates it's in the 50,000 range. We're seeing a massive politically targeted purge of people from communications platform. It's honestly rather scary - far more scary than a protest going out of control for a bit.
Good. Let the hate come forth. Then the fucking hypocrites can burn, and triggered elitists can play in the ashes of their tech stock portfolios.
And Twitter becoming a shadow of it's former self, isn't "scary" for society. What's scary, is a society too fucking stupid to understand the world of human communication does NOT revolve around tweets and the twits who define themselves by that shit.
Re: Obvious (Score:2)
It isnâ(TM)t just Twitter, but the coordinated attack on their competition. It screams only this state approved social media is approved.
I think people are also voting with their feet and itâ(TM)s not the last change we will see.
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What's scary, is a society too fucking stupid to understand the world of human communication does NOT revolve around tweets and the twits who define themselves by that shit.
What's scary, is a society too fucking stupid to understand the world of human communication does NOT revolve around Slashdot posts and the 'dotters who define themselves by that shit.
Sorry, I just wanted to see what that would have looked like if somebody had posted it on Twitter; but I don't have a Twitter account.
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It's honestly rather scary - far more scary than a protest going out of control for a bit.
"Scary"? Is Twitter holding up the sky?
Protestors entering into the Capitol Building and forcing an evacuation while there was an important democratic process under way is a lot more scary than this.
Re: Obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, and you making those very people inaudible so the next time the surprise can be even bigger, is even more scary.
You think two fifths of your population will just vanish or change their minds with this?
Have fun with that civil war, mates!
We'll be over here with the popcorn and the closed borders and missile defense shields.
(On a serious note: Iwish you all the best. But you gotta stop ignoring the causes, and start handling this smarter!!)
Re: Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow you're a fucking dumbass.
You seem to think that there is some logical truth to why people were protesting. Some underlying factual thread to tie them all together. There isn't. It's completely constructed, using social media.
Pretty much everything that the rabid fascists were shouting and protesting was a fabrication. They would have never even have heard those fabrications if it wasn't for social media. They wouldn't have been able to organize around those fabrications if it wasn't for social media.
Two fifths of the population absolutely will go back do doing whatever they were doing before if the easy way to be engaged and organized is gone. This like you saying, "They removed the road. Do you think that's going to stop people from going there?"
Yes. Yes it will. There will still be some diehards who try to do it even though it's more difficult, but take a look at Parler and the rest to see how sustainable that is.
And you are wrong about 40% of the population. I don't know if you're doing that to try to make your poor point sound stronger or simply incapable of math. Only 20% of the population voted Trump, and the people who support this sort of nonsense are less than half of them. 10% of the population can't easily start a civil war, especially if they're distributed over a wide area. And even moreso if their main means of communication and organizing is stripped from them.
That's not how it works (Score:4, Interesting)
As for the quiet nut jobs, the FBI did a fine job controlling them in the Obama years. Trump massively pulled back enforcement on right wing domestic terrorists. That was not an accident.
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The complaint is that key people are reporting losing followers and claiming it must be because they are banned, which is not accurate as they have no way of knowing whether these are accounts that were banned or people for whom the Wednesday incident was crossing a line and they unfollowed, and finally if they deleted their own account because they are protesting Twitter for banning Trump. That last point is critical, people are claiming Twitter is purging in part because they themselves are self-deleting
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How many of those are part of Roger Stone's astroturf botnet? For all we know, only five people have been kicked off.
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Trump is supposedly over at Gab now. [gab.com]
Twitter just shot themselves in the foot. People are flocking over to Gab at a furious pace. In the long run, Twitter loses marketshare while the upstart competitors now get a chance to acquire many new users.
There are no more posts there than there was on twitter. He wasn't there on Januari 6 https://news.gab.com/2021/01/0... [gab.com] most posts predates that and with the similarity to the twitter posts I'll go out on a limb and say he hasn't moved to Gab (yet?), they've only copied the twitter posts.
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TDS? I don't think we need to bring the ability to believe the alleged president into this.
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An alternative infrastructure (Score:2)
Like Parler?
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If there was ever any doubt ... (Score:5, Insightful)
If there was ever any doubt why Twitter (or any media outlet) put up with Trump's BS for all these years, you just need to follow the $$$$.
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It became a new area because it was considered official government communications because it came direct from the president. Yeah Trump did get special treatment in that regard. Now Trump's tweets have a body count including a police officer (who was a supporter himself). Strange that the Blue Lives Matter crowd beat a cop to death with a fire extinguisher.
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Strange that the Blue Lives Matter crowd beat a cop to death with a fire extinguisher.
It's "Back the Blue, but only if they support you!"
I know, doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Also, another clarification aimed at the Blue Lives Matter/All Lives Matter crowd: Black Lives Matter should be read in the context of "Black Lives Matter, too"
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Lol you didn't read your own fucking link.
Police union representatives reportedly told reporters that an officer died Thursday, but later stated that the officer in question would be taken off life support Friday morning.
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It became a new area because it was considered official government communications because it came direct from the president. Yeah Trump did get special treatment in that regard. Now Trump's tweets have a body count including a police officer (who was a supporter himself). Strange that the Blue Lives Matter crowd beat a cop to death with a fire extinguisher.
Not according to the capital police, who say these reports are wrong.
https://thehill.com/homenews/n... [thehill.com]
And this is The Hill correcting that story and the Capitol Police confirming the death: https://thehill.com/homenews/n... [thehill.com]
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It became a new area because it was considered official government communications because it came direct from the president. Yeah Trump did get special treatment in that regard. Now Trump's tweets have a body count including a police officer (who was a supporter himself). Strange that the Blue Lives Matter crowd beat a cop to death with a fire extinguisher.
Not according to the capital police, who say these reports are wrong.
https://thehill.com/homenews/n... [thehill.com]
And this is The Hill correcting that story and the Capitol Police confirming the death: https://thehill.com/homenews/n... [thehill.com]
Sorry, the correct url is https://thehill.com/homenews/n... [thehill.com]
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And they were just giving this officer a nice little back massage.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Er... [twimg.com]
There wasn't. (Score:2)
This is always true, including for his fascist followers like Lindsey Graham still trying to completely remove free speech online via section 230 repeal.
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If there was ever any doubt why Twitter (or any media outlet) put up with Trump's BS for all these years, you just need to follow the $$$$.
No you don't. Just follow the balance of power. You don't bite the hand that threatens to regulate you, at least not until the owner of said hand is no longer in a position to do so.
Money is hardly of relevance to Twitter, which I remind you is a company which has made an absolute pittance of a net profit for the first time only 2 years ago, yet despite that has a market cap of $38bn. $$$$ have never made any kind of sense either for Twitter's business model or when analysing how they run their company.
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If $$$$ were the only reason, why would they stop now?
All about appearances (Score:3, Interesting)
All the tech companies (Apple, Twitter, FB, Stripe, Google, etc) are scrambling, after the fact, to publicly appease the viewpoints of the left, now that it's a sure thing that Trump didn't win the election, and even more important, that the Democrats have taken control of Congress as well. So this is simply them trying to gain some kind of favor for the next 2-4 years since Trump has been rendered totally inconsequential. The actual repercussions of their actions, besides concerning those of us that prefer technological platforms to be apolitical, is moot.
Wrong (Score:2)
Trump and his followers have become too toxic to deal with. Nobody wants them as customers or users. Free market at work. As if these tech companies weren't left leaning in the first place.
Re: Wrong (Score:2)
They are still, what, 40% of your population?
Yes they are. People who just act differently to get by, while internally growing even more angry, included.
If that is too toxic, why don't you dissolve the country too at that point?
What a stupid argument.
Man up and deal with them. Because like it or nor, they are your neighbors.
And who knows... maybe their life has been so shit that from their POV this looked reasonable.
Imagine being in such a bad life situation...
Maybe that can be fixed.
I'd start with the obvi
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Maybe that can be fixed.
I'd start with the obvious: Investing in good education, good mental health care, and fair jobs with livable wages for everyone. Investing means you pay now so you and your children save later.
Funny you mention that, this is exactly what we're trying to do, but the 40% you mention don't want to have any of it.
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These people are in a bad situation because of their own votes. Living in poverty but not wanting help because socialism is the devil. See Mitch not voting on stimulus checks.
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HA HA HA HA.
You think that the tech companies appeases the left? You have no idea what you are talking about, they have routinely been subjecting the left to far more strict terms than the right. The most obvious examples is when women get horrendously insulted, then publicly quote the insults, the women get banned rather than the men that insulted them.
The government appeases the tech companies, not the other way around.
And anyone that knows anything about what is going on with the tech companies know t
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All the tech companies (Apple, Twitter, FB, Stripe, Google, etc) are scrambling, after the fact, to publicly appease the viewpoints of the left, now that it's a sure thing that Trump didn't win the election...
It's only a sure thing he didn't win the election "Now"?
Not early Nov after the votes were counted?
Nor Late Nov when all states had to have their votes certified?
Nor Dec 8th when it was Safe Harbor?
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Funny how it's gone from "Twitter are a bunch of lefty SJWs" to now trying to appease us. Apparently they were always that way but as the balance of power shifts so has the silly narrative.
Fact is Twitter treats everyone pretty evenly, which is to say badly. Plenty of left leaning people get banned over bullshit. Some justifiably, after all just being a leftist doesn't make you immune to stupidity.
Twitter is not all that good at moderation, although streets ahead of places like Facebook. Moderation is hard.
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I see. So it has nothing to do with the failed coup by people who threaten another attempt.
And don't say it wasn't a coup attempt because it was poorly planned. Bad planning is Trump's style: he shoots from the hip, thriving on chaos, not details.
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Does "tech" include BlueCross/BlueShield, Marriott, Commerce Bancshares, and Boston Scientific? These companies are ceasing donations to anyone supporting claims of election fraud. [motherjones.com] Does it cover Forbes Magazine?
No, this is not about Biden having won the election. It is all about the fact that Trump did the unthinkable and tried to have a mob overthrow the election by attacking Congress. It is a move straight out of various South American dictator playbooks. He crossed a redline of American politics and ever
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All the tech companies (Apple, Twitter, FB, Stripe, Google, etc) are scrambling, after the fact, to align with the viewpoints of the median American voter
There. Fixed that for ya.
Sounds like (Score:2)
The perfect time to buy Twitter stock.
-
"It's like a thousand butthurt voices cried out at once."
Re: Sounds like (Score:2)
Oh yeah, it definitely is. Volume on TWTR is already something like 2x or 3x their normal daily average and it's not even 11 AM. It's a panic sale.
In related news.... (Score:5, Funny)
Parler is down 99%.
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Parler is down 99%.
I hear Mark Levin is promoting it as a great investment opportunity at the moment.
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Parler is a private company. So it's not any sort of investment opportunity at the moment (unless they do a fundraising round, which I would not touch with a 3-metre pole.)
Banned for what? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Spreading misinformation and violence. After he told his terrorist followers he loved them and to go home he could have shut up. But no he still went on about the election being stolen. But again twitter is under no law or obligation to broadcast the speech of anyone.
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It wasn't. That was a fig leaf for admitting they had made a mistake.
For the past 4 years, Trump has routinely violated their policies. He would have been banned if he wasn't the President. After the fact they decided to pretend that his job made his statements newsworthy and that was more important than their policy and decided to change their policies giving him immunity.
They have now realized that this is incorrect. Being President does not make it "OK" to yell FIRE! in a crowded theater and letti
Re: Banned for what? (Score:2)
You're coming to an emotional knee-jerking dance with rational reasoning.
Think of them as your wife when she just wants to follow her heart.
Heart:
Me see Trump rally anrgy.
Me see angry raid temple.
Me shock. Swing club at origin.
That is literally all it is.
And I'm not saying it is wrong.
Emotions are just big picture logic for being able to gain useful choices from vague input. They are just as valid has hard cold precise logic. Because real life is not precise and clear cut. And the latter lets you make bad c
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Yeah, no. You were wrong. They are profitable. They are inline with the other stocks in their industry. You could claim that the entire industry is in a bubble, but not the stock.
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Plunging! (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter stock has plunged, PLUNGED to levels not seen since (checks notes)...
mid December.
Just wait until the next shoe drops (Score:2)
Trump is negotiating [nationalfile.com] with several other media sites. Gab is probably at the top of the list because it has several million users, a die hard supporter in the CEO and a track record of surviving attacks like the one on Parler.
If Trump pulls that trigger, watch Twitter's stop drop another 10-15% immediately on fears that Trump will draw at least 5M, upwards of probably about 20M, new users to whatever platform he chooses. The market will be very fearful that the long tail will unwind and send the momentum awa
7% is diddly. (Score:2)
You can lose 7% due to an unsubstantiated rumor.
Twitter will miss Trump driving engagement, but can function just fine without him. They will certainly lose some clicks, but how many of those clicks were on ads? Probably not many.
By booting Trump before being forced to do so, Twitter winds up looking like a good guy (to some... probably to enough) even after giving him a platform all this time.
No corporation should have that power. (Score:2)
At least in an actual democracy.
We should have thought of the consequences, four years ago. And we should now be good and face the Trumpet music. Every last hateful tweet. Every protesting desperation nut.
It is supposed to hurt.
Just so we would make damn sure this never happens again.
And win anyway. Point at his tweets and laugh. On national television. With a literal ba-dum TISS.
This should be a lesson.
But alas ... It's symptom hiding time again. ... how big a percentage of the
Carry on, nothing to see. Not
Re:No corporation should have that power. (Score:4, Informative)
At least in an actual democracy.
In an actual democracy, with a functioning political system, a leader saying the types of things Trump has done, the anger and vitriol he has directed against not only members of his own party but at his own ardent supporters, would have been removed by his own party as unfit for office long ago.
I predict Twitter will do the following: (Score:2)
Based on past performance and analysies of it's stock price and previous actions I predict Twitter will do the following:
Yep that's the complete list. It's also a list of how much they care about this and it's also the exhaustive list of how much they cared in:
October 2020: 25% drop in share price
September 2020: 13% drop in share price
June 2020: 12% drop in share price
Nov 2019: 25% drop in share price
Dec 2018: 22% drop in share price
July 2018: 30% drop in share price, now that was a big one.
Why would anyone
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Why would anyone care about a 7% drop?
This is from a Bloomberg article, covering the financial markets is what they do. Think of it as a sports commentator, they are just repeating what happened. No need to read anything particular into it. If you were to ask why it appeared here I'd say clickbait or someone who doesn't know how volatile the stock is (which you showed very well but I snipped for brevity).
Just a demonstration of power... (Score:3)
So Biden knows what will happen if he tries to do anything to harm silicon valley in any way, shape or form.
Small fish (Score:2)
When Elon Musk smokes a single joint the stock goes down more.
Also all the white supremacists in general (Score:2)
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Didn't Facebook admit they couldn't block (Score:3)
In any case this is expected. They're about to lose the eyeballs of a ton of doom scrollers. Facebook, Twitter, et al have a right wing bias (Facebook especially) not because they care one way or the other but because the right wing is more prone to doom scrolling (excuse me, "engagement").
It's the same reason why there's little to no left wing fake news. There was an interview in the 2016 election with one of the guys making big money off the stuff and they asked him point blank why it was all pro-Trump / pro-right wing. He answered, truthfully, that he'd tried doing it for the left wing but that it gets debunked too fast to spread virally enough to make any money.
And that's the point. This is all about money. Always has been.
Re: Well if you want to follow an incompetent blow (Score:2)
Hello, creimer dingleberry!
Fun fact: You are now officially part of the creimer existence. You spread his mental existence into the brains of others. You keep it alive. The abyss stared back at you and you became it.
Or... choose to never speak of him again, and in every case strenthen the idea that he does not exist, and everyone has forgotten him.
Your choice, really.
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To me, a more important indicator will be how much short interest increases. Everyone seems to agree that their next quarterly earnings will drop, but by how much? How much does the market believe it will?
Short interests in the US are only reported semimonthly.