Just to clarify: is that $1.9M the revenue, or is it (“earnings”) the operating profit that Twitter recorded from some larger amount of revenue (e.g. the $274M mentioned in the article)? Because if they’re just ditching the operating profit that could well be to stave off some kind of action that would lead to them disgorging it anyway. (E.g., if Twitter knew that RT was an arm of the russian government when it pushed for high ad spending to influence the election…)
Eh, I’m not impressed. When push comes to shove, they did something but it hardly seems enough to meet the urgency of the problem. Plus, like the article says, they are one quarter away from profitability and Congress is breathing down their neck. And btw, who gives a shit what Russia thinks, its a private company that works out of the US, or at least is incorporated here, so if they don’t like transparency, they can shove it. I have a feeling they’ll find other ways, cut outs of the Kremlin propaganda machinery (fake accounts), to still get their bullshit onto twitter, and sadly, twitter will still find ways to pocket any money involved.
RT alone had spent $274 million on Twitter advertising in 2016…
…The company will donate the $1.9 million in advertising revenue it estimates it has taken from RT since 2011 to…
Uh…something not adding up there. If they received $274 million in 2016 alone, obviously they received a lot more than $1.9 million since 2011.
My guess is that it is supposed to say $1.9 billion since 2011.
(Just multiplying $274 million by the 6 years 2011-2016 comes to about $1.6 billion, so my guess is that’s probably what’s going on here – and perhaps they’re including what has been received in 2017 so far, in which if the amount is similar, the total would come out to almost exactly to $1.9 billion. Naturally it has probably varied a bit from year to year, but an average of $274 billion for 7 years comes out to just over $1.9 billion.)
Which, by the way, is a lot of money coming from a Russian-government-funded propaganda “news” network. And that’s only the money from one Russian source to one social media platform.
Imagine what the total amount must be that Putin has poured – directly and indirectly – into social media and other forms of propaganda targeted at the U.S. I wonder if he’s hit a trillion dollars yet. Wouldn’t surprise me.
You could be right. Or it could be that $1.9mil is the profit they’re willing to declare on the $274M in revenues. Because little bird icons are really expensive. Even internet companies generally don’t donate $1.9 Billion to anyone.