Twitter is smoked after the removal of 70 million suspicious accounts in the last 2 months (TWTR)

• The Washington Post reported Friday that Twitter removed 70 million accounts in May and June, which the company confirmed to Business Insider.
• Twitter shares fell by more than 8% at market opening on Monday
• Suspensions could hurt Twitter's account growth statistics when it publishes its results this month.

Twitter sank more than 8% Monday morning after the Washington Post reported that the social media company had removed more than 70 million accounts in May and June. Although the report was released on Friday, it was only when the markets were already closed.

The account suspension rate has more than doubled since October, when Twitter told Congress that it had found evidence of Russian robot accounts aimed at interfering with the 2016 presidential election. June, Twitter said that its systems "identified and contested over 9.9 million potentially spam or automated accounts per week".

In a statement, a Twitter spokesman told Business Insider: "This is not new, our work in progress to improve the health of the public conversation on Twitter. "

On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump hailed the removal of Twitter accounts, and called on the company to also suspend the accounts of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

"Twitter gets rid of fake accounts at a record pace", Trump tweeted . "Will that include the Failing New York Times and the propaganda machine for Amazon, the Washington Post, which constantly cites anonymous sources that I do not think exist – they will both be bankrupt in seven years!"

Suspensions could have an impact on daily and monthly statistics of Twitter's active users when they report second-quarter earnings before the opening bell on Friday, July 27, an unnamed source told Reuters on Friday. newspaper. However, a Twitter spokesman said that he has never included spam accounts in active user numbers that he reports to shareholders.

"It's hard to believe that 70 million accounts were affected when Twitter has only 336 million active users per month (MAU)," badyst Wedbush badyst Michael Pachter told Reuters. "My guess is that many of these suspended accounts were inactive … this should have little impact on society. "

Twitter shares have gained 75% since the beginning of 2018.