Elon Musk’s takeover sparks exodus of over one million accounts on Twitter: Report

About one million authentic accounts have fled Twitter following billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover as the CEO of the social networking company. According to data gathered by bot tracking firm Bot Sentinel, more than 800,000 accounts have been deactivated and over 500,000 have been suspended since Musk took over as the chief last week.

“Based on our internal data, we estimate 877,000 Twitter accounts were deactivated, and a further 497,000 were suspended between October 27 and November 1,” Bot Sentinel founder Christopher Bouzy wrote on Twitter, adding that the figure is “more than double the usual number.”

Bouzy, in a conversation with MIT Technology Review, revealed that his company deduced the estimated numbers after a thorough analysis of a small chunk of Twitter accounts and by studying the percentage of users that deactivated their accounts. They then used the percentage on the total number of users on Twitter, which is 237 million accounts at present. 

Multiple users quit Twitter after Musk acquires the platform

The bot-tracking company then arrived at the conclusion that 11,535 of the accounts that they monitored were deactivated between October 27 and November 1, and 6,824 were suspended, which brings the percentage to 0.59%. The company then applied this percentage to the total number of users on Twitter. 

“We believe the uptick in deactivations is a result of people upset with Elon Musk purchasing Twitter and deciding to deactivate their accounts in protest,” Bouzy said as he acknowledged that the analysis was drawn from anecdotal evidence. The report comes after multiple celebrity figures including Jameela Jamil, Toni Braxton, Shonda Rhimes, and Mick Foley have announced their plans of quitting the platform. Meanwhile, Hollywood actor Amber Heard has already done so.