Twitter will lose over 32 million users by 2024 as Elon Musk's takeover causes more hate speech and technical problems, report says

• Twitter could lose over 32 million users in the next two years, Insider Intelligence found.
• Elon Musk fired thousands of Twitter employees in November, leaving few to maintain the platform.

Twitter could lose more than 30 million users in the next two years after Elon Musk took over in November, data from Insider Intelligence showed.

Twitter is predicted to lose almost 4% of its users in 2023 and 5% in 2024, meaning over 32 million users will leave the platform, according to an annual decline forecast by Insider Intelligence, which has been tracking the platform since 2008.

Users will abandon the platform as frustrations over mounting technical issues and increased hate speech and offensive content flood the platform, Insider Intelligence said.

"There won't be one catastrophic event that ends Twitter," Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence said. "Instead, users will start to leave the platform next year as they grow frustrated with technical issues and the proliferation of hateful or other unsavory content.

"Twitter's skeleton staff, working around the clock, won't be able to counteract the platform's infrastructure and content moderation problems."

Twitter is expected to lose more users in the US than in any other country with numbers falling from 58.7 million in 2022 to 50.5 million by the end of 2024.

Most departures will be under 25 and over 45 because they "aren't as loyal and are less willing to tolerate a degrading experience," the report said.

The forecast for Twitter ad revenue growth was also cut to "essentially flat," over the next two years, Insider Intelligence said. It had previously expected the platform to see double-digit increases for 2023 and 2024.

After Musk's takeover, a number of companies including Audi, Volkswagen, and Pfizer suspended advertising from the platform over concerns about Musk's content moderation plans.

Despite a bleak forecast, Enberg said: "If Musk manages to stave off service issues and potential outages, fix the platform's content moderation problems and integrate new services into the app to drive revenue, he may be still able to reverse the course of the user drain."

Musk went on a firing spree in early November, laying off half of the company's roughly 8,000 employees. A further 2,000 people resigned after he issued an ultimatum to either join his "hardcore" Twitter 2.0 or quit. A Twitter executive told Insider that issues and glitches will build up as so few employees remain to maintain the platform.

Twitter did not respond to Insider's request for comment about user decline.