Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has admitted that it has been overstating its daily active users numbers by up to 1.9mln since 2019, which it said was the result of an error.
Shares in the social media company, which at the start of this week agreed a US$44bn buyout from Tesla boss Elon Musk, barely moved as it made the admission as part of first-quarter results.
Twitter said the overstatement of its 'mDAU' – or daily active usage – stats was the result of “an error introduced in March of 2019”, when it “launched a feature that allowed people to link multiple separate accounts together in order to conveniently switch between accounts”.
The error meant “actions taken via the primary account resulted in all linked accounts being counted as mDAU, which resulted in an overstatement of mDAU from the first quarter of 2019 to the end of 2021.
The overstatement reached 1.9mln at the end of last year, of which 1.5mln were international users and 0.3mln in the US.
Total mDAU in the fourth quarter was restated as 214.7mln, having previously been reported 216.6mln.
This is the second time Twitter has overcounted user numbers, the first being a similar issue in 2017.
Let’s make Twitter maximum fun!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2022
Musk has said he plans to clamp down on “bots” or fake accounts when he takes over.
First-quarter revenues were reported at US$1.2bn, below Wall Street’s forecasts due to “headwinds associated with the war in Ukraine”, with net income of US$513mln.