Twitter shares slide as company dubbed ‘Harvey Weinstein of Social Media’

Shares in Twitter are down 12.6 per cent as the social media giant heads towards for its biggest one-day fall in nearly five months.

It comes after a report from Citron Research said the technology company “has become the Harvey Weinstein of Social Media”, following a damning Amnesty International study.

The human rights charity said on Tuesday that 7.1 per cent of tweets -totaling 1.1m – sent to 778 journalists and politicians in the UK and the US were “problematic” or “abusive”.

Citron Research wrote that Twitter had become “uninvestable” following the Amnesty report that said the company’s failure to “effectively tackle violence and abuse on the platform has a chilling effect on freedom of expression online”.

“Twitter lags Facebook and Google on growth,” the Citron report said.

“But, any form of tweaking of the business model to “monitor speech” sends traffic, engagement, and total users backwards for Twitter – a deathblow for a company playing catch up.”

It added: “The hate on Twitter is real and the company is not taking proper steps to curb the problem.

“Citron believes this story has just begun and advertisers will be forced to make more morality-based brand building decisions.”

City A.M. has contacted Twitter for comment.