Twitter ‘toxic’ to investors and advertisers: Citron Research

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Twitter chief executive officer Jack Dorsey testifies during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing concerning foreign influence in use of social media platforms, on Capitol Hill, September 5, 2018 in Washington, DC.

Citron Research set a new $20 a share price target for Twitter on Thursday after an eye-opening report from Amnesty International alleged the platform was full of human rights abuses, especially towards women.

Calling Twitter “the Harvey Weinstein of social media,” the Citron note said the platform will have to face hard questions from ad buyers who are concerned about social issues.

“Citron has been following Twitter for years and when we read the just published piece from Amnesty International, we immediately knew the stock had become uninvestable and advertisers will soon be forced to take a hard look at all sponsorships with Twitter,” the Citron report said.

Twitter shares were down nearly 9 percent Thursday morning.

The Amnesty International and Element AI study, which was released on Tuesday, looked at millions of tweets from 778 U.K. and U.S. journalists and politicians made during 2017. Using artificial intelligence, it concluded that a “problematic” or “abusive” tweet was sent to one of the women every 30 seconds. It also found women of color were 34 percent more likely to be mentioned in troubling tweets than white women, with black women targeted themost. The abuse did not discriminate between liberal or conservative women.

“Twitter’s failure to effectively tackle violence and abuse on the platform has a chilling effect on freedom of expression online and undermines women’s mobilization for equality and justice – particularly groups of women who already face discrimination and marginalization,” the study authors wrote.

A Twitter spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

Citron took another look at Twitter stock, given the recent declines Facebook has encountered due to privacy and management issues. It said Twitter faces the same privacy regulation rules that Facebook is encountering, noting it generated $108 million in revenue from user data licensing last quarter, or about 80 percent of its total profits.

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