Twitter Inc (TWTR) Has a Terrorism Problem. Kinda.

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U.K. lawmakers say Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and other social media companies are “consciously failing” to ban users who promote terrorism or recruit extremists. But the attack is both unfair and immaterial to Twitter stock.

Twitter TWTR stock

It has been argued that one of the reasons that TWTR’s user growth stalled out short of becoming a mass market platform is its bad reputation. It’s fair to say that among other associations, the Twitter brand is linked in the public’s mind to trolling, shaming and the general dissemination of hate. And that’s before even taking terrorists and terrorism into account.

Perhaps Twitter’s user growth — and by extension Twitter stock — would benefit from the company taking a more active approach against some of the worst of its users.

But probably not.

Twitter has plenty of other, more important limitations as a social media tool. If scouring the site of jerks isn’t going to juice growth, why would it help to boot terrorists? People don’t shun TWTR because radical extremists have a presence there.

Twitter is conscious of protecting its brand as a bastion of free speech, but it’s flattering itself if it thinks any would-be mass market users care. It’s a good bet that the majority of people don’t think free speech extends to terrorists or hate-mongers.

This is not a First Amendment issue, either. That applies only to government, not private enterprise.

A Lot of Nothing for Twitter Stock

Kicking horrible people, hate mongers, terrorists couldn’t hurt. There’s no downside to “no shoes, no shirt, no service.” However, it’s really hard to see that leading to the type of resurgence in user growth TWTR needs to get Twitter stock moving.

So, as noted above, all of this is immaterial to the share price.

As for the charge that Twitter consciously fails to police terrorism accounts? Just shut up. Tech-illiterate members of Parliament don’t seem to know that TWTR can’t just do away with the problem by flicking a switch. As Twitter has said:

“As many experts and other companies have noted, there is no ‘magic algorithm’ for identifying terrorist content on the internet, so global online platforms are forced to make challenging judgement calls based on very limited information and guidance.”

Twitter suspended 235,000 accounts since February for threatening or promoting terrorist acts, primarily related to ISIS. There are literally hundreds of millions of accounts to track on the service. New ones spring up every hour of the day. Twitter can dedicate more resources to the endeavor, but it’s in no one’s interest to rack up a cost center.

Twitter and the other social media firms targeted by the U.K. MPs are hardly thumbing their noses at law enforcement. Any hit it takes from free-speech protectors is probably more than offset by being seen as fighting terrorism.

Twitter shareholders should welcome anything TWTR does to make itself more attractive to people who don’t have accounts. Slamming it for “consciously failing” to do so is political posturing at best.

Either way, none of this means much for the Twitter stock price.

As of this writing, Dan Burrows did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

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Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2016/08/twitter-stock-twtr-terrorism/.

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