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by Tiziana Di Giovannandrea

20 September 2021 Twitter Inc. has decided to negotiate the payment of 809.5 million dollars to settle the class action with which it was accused of having deceived investors in 2015 on the data relating to users and on the growth of its own user base.



The

shareholders have accused

the social network, specifically, have them cheated on the number of monthly active users and on measure that indicates how frequently users interact with the platform.



The San Francisco-based company said the proposed deal - which must be approved by a judge - resolves all claims against it. The final agreement, in fact, should close the case without admitting any fault or improper behavior on the part of Twitter.



The original lawsuit was filed in 2016 by Twitter investor Doris Shenwick in the Northern District of California District Court. The class action alleged that social media executives "knowingly made inaccurate public statements regarding these metrics and did not disclose inside information about them, resulting in an inflated share price, which fell as the truth about user engagement became known. ".



Shareholders accuse the company of masking too slow growth, while "selling shares for millions of dollars".



Under the deal, Twitter will pay $ 809.5 million for

violating sections of

the 1934

'Securities Exchange Act'

. The company said it plans to use available cash to pay for the deal in the fourth quarter of 2021. As a result. , plans to post a one-time charge.



As a result of the allegations in 2014, Twitter executives said the site's average monthly user base was expected to increase significantly to "over 550 million" in the medium term and "over a billion" in the long term. In 2019, Twitter stopped reporting monthly user data. At the last count that spring, that number was 330 million. Currently Twitter only reports daily user data. And in 2017, Twitter claimed it mistakenly overestimated its monthly user numbers because it included users from a third-party app that it shouldn't have.