According to Fidelity Mutual Fund, the social media platform X lost 71% of its worth since it was purchased by Elon Musk.
Fidelity has marked down its share value by 71.5%, according to a disclosure obtained from Axios.
Musk purchased Twitter in October 2022, and renamed it X in July of 2023. Fidelity estimates the value of X to be around $12.5bn.
In the first year following Musk’s acquisition, the number of monthly X users dropped by 15% amid concerns about a rise of hate speech.
Since Musk took over, X has reduced staff by at least half and streamlined moderation. In September, the European Union sent a warning to Musk for having the highest percentage of disinformation on social media.
Axios reported that Fidelity’s new valuation of X was based on a disclosure that ran until the end of 2023. X did respond immediately to a comment request.
The New York Times reported that the disclosure would cover any fallout after a number major companies pulled advertising from X following Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Musk told companies during an interview in New York to “go fuck yourselves” as a response to the boycott.
Musk, who has a net-worth of $251bn, is the richest person in the world, according to Forbes. Musk claimed that he bought Twitter “to help humanity”.
Musk has restored a number people who were previously banned, including the former president Donald Trump as well as the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Trump faces more than 90 criminal accusations stemming from the subversion of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Other charges include the retention of government secrets following his presidency, and payments of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump is also trying to avoid civil lawsuits involving business matters and an allegation of rape that was deemed by a court as being substantially true.
Jones has proposed to pay $55m to Sandy Hook families over a period of 10 years for spreading the lies that the 2012 Newtown schoolhouse murders were a hoax to force the US into accepting gun control.
Jones’s offer was made after a Texas court ruled that Jones (the host of Infowars) could not use bankruptcy protection in order to avoid paying nearly $1.5bn to the families of victims of one the deadliest US school shootings. Jones’s followers abused and threatened the families.