Jack Dorsey led Twitter’s market cap fell by around $5 billion as its stock crashed 12 per cent following the permanent suspension of US President Donald Trump, Business Insider has reported.
As per the report, investors may be concerned about the interest in the platform waning following Trump’s suspension.
The stock subsequently recovered slightly to close 6.41 per cent in the red.
Twitter has been blasted for its unprecedented censorship of the sitting US President from various corners including world leaders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called it problematic and top Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny termed it as an unacceptable act of censorship.
Twitter has been accused of selectively going after conservative voices, with many pointing out that a similar action was not taken against other current and former world leaders like former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for inciting violence.
Ahead of his suspension, Trump also faced an unprecedented throttling of his tweets wherein he alleged that the presidential polls were not conducted in a fair and transparent manner.
But the move drew criticism from some Republicans for quelling the President’s right to free speech, and European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton said the past week’s events likely heralded a new era of heavier official control.
That concerned financial investors, who worry that Twitter will be more exposed to any push on regulation than its bigger rivals Facebook Inc or Google and YouTube-owner Alphabet.
Other social media platforms including Facebook have issued similar bans on Trump, but the fall of as much as 12% in Twitter shares was much heavier than for any of its peers.
“Trump has a very high and loyal following and a lot of those eyeballs will go away if Trump is permanently restricted from posting,” said Andrea Cicione, head of strategy at brokerage TS Lombard.
