Toxic Twitter: bringing back banned accounts generates ad revenue
Previously banned accounts reinstated by Musk are generating millions in ad revenue for the platform.
About this research
This original report draws on an ad-library audit and API/data analysis.
- Publication
- Original report · 22 pages
- Research approach
- ad-library audit and API/data analysis
- Reported study scale
- ten accounts
- Research materials
- Public-source data is described in the publication
Publication details prepared by Social Media Transparency from the original source.
Executive summary
AI-generatedThis summary was generated by AI from the original report to make it easier to scan and cite. It is not a substitute for the source. Read the original above.
This Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) report examines accounts previously banned from Twitter for policy violations and reinstated after Elon Musk's takeover, tracking their tweet-impression data from mid-December 2022 onward. Researchers sampled 1,039 tweets to establish an average ad-appearance frequency, then combined that with industry cost-per-impression estimates to project annual ad revenue.
Across ten reinstated accounts, the analysis found roughly 2.5 billion accumulated tweet impressions and about 54 million combined daily impressions, projecting to around 20 billion impressions annually. Based on these figures, the report estimates Twitter could generate up to $19 million a year in ad revenue from just these ten accounts, with Andrew Tate's account alone estimated at $12.3 million annually.
The report concludes that reinstating previously banned users, some of whom had been removed for hate speech or misinformation, appears to generate meaningful advertising revenue for the platform, and that major brands risk having their ads placed alongside this content as a result of these reinstatements.
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