Twitter Inc. admitted overstating its audience figures by about 2 million users for about three years as it reported its Q1 results.
“In March of 2019, we launched a feature that allowed people to link multiple separate accounts together in order to conveniently switch between accounts,” Twitter disclosed. “An error was made at that time, such that actions taken via the primary account resulted in all linked accounts being counted as mDAU.”
The difference between the figures Twitter reported over the past year, and the actual count ranged from 1.4 million—1.9 million, just below 1 percent of the total, the Financial Times reports.
It came just days after Twitter agreed to a leveraged buyout by Elon Musk.