In the days after Musk's takeover bid, there was an influx of conservative users on the platform, which could be more than offsetting the loss of left-leaning users.
Musk is in the process of acquiring a company.
The leading conservative accounts gained an average of 17,229 followers while the leading liberal accounts lost 6,062 followers after the announcement of Musk's acquisition of Twitter.
The shift appears to be the result of organic account creation and deactivation, rather than the platform taking action against rule breaking accounts.
Assuming no overlap between the new followers of the top 50 conservative accounts, Forbes estimates that the influx of users following the top 50 conservative accounts could net the company around $5.6 million a quarter in advertising revenue.
The number of new users following Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday was 141,556, making him the most popular account in the top 50.
After Musk's announcement, users will flock to follow conservative accounts on the platform, which will make up for the loss of users who follow liberal accounts.
Vice President Kamala Harris lost the most followers of the top 50 liberal accounts on Tuesday, which equates to a loss of around $150,000 a quarter.
$6.50 a piece. According to the platform's financial filing from the fourth quarter of the year, that's how much each user is worth to the company. According to the company, there were an average of 217 million daily users on the platform, and it made over $1 billion from them in ads. The total revenue per user will be slightly higher, but ads make up the vast majority.
Musk has offered to buy the company. The offer has been accepted by the company's board and will be presented to shareholders for a vote. Both parties can walk away from the deal with a $1 billion fee. The deal is unlikely to be stopped by regulators on antitrust grounds.
Since news of Musk's acquisition broke, there have been reports of liberal users leaving the social network. The figures quoted by NBC were much higher than the Social Blade data suggests, and would be worth around $2 million and $1.3 million a quarter in ad revenue, respectively. Concerns over Musk's views on free speech and his approach to censorship on social media were cited as the reason for the exodus. Many of the people who have previously slammed the platform for bias and censorship and praised Musk's commitment to protecting free speech have gained followers on the platform.
The number of followers is changing. The makeup of users following leading liberal and conservative accounts may not have been driven by a shift in the number of conservative or liberal users on the platform. Managerial and policy changes are not likely to have been made. The change could be explained by the fact that it has not taken action against some of the accounts. According to data from Sensor Tower, former President Donald Trump's social media app, Truth Social, jumped to the top of the Apple App Store on Tuesday.
There are demographic changes on social media. The data in this story only shows the number of people following liberal and conservative accounts on the Monday and Tuesday after the deal was announced. The changes continued throughout the week.
What employees are saying about Musk.
mass deactivations after Musk news were organic.
The data shows a boost in followers for conservative accounts after Musk's acquisition.
What will happen next after the $44 billion Musk deal? (Forbes)
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