Twitter's stock is the highest it has been all year after its hate purge (TWTR)

pulse

December 18, 2017 4:29 PM

It turns out investors probably don't like racists.

Twitter's stock is up 8% after the company began purging accounts that push racist and other hate speech.

The firm's share price is sitting at $24.12 (£17.98), the highest it's been all year.

Twitter began suspending hateful accounts on Monday afternoon, with the leaders of far-right group Britain First, Jayda Fransen and Paul Golding, among the first to go.

The company has introduced new rules which mean accounts affiliated with hate groups either online or in the real world will be suspended, and it's likely multiple high-profile, far-right figures will be affected.

The purge coincides with other good news for Twitter. Bloomberg's Tic Toc, a Twitter-only video news service which runs 24/7, also went live on Monday.

Twitter's stock has been climbing steadily over the last week, fuelled in part by a photo from the CEO of Goldman Sachs. The image showed Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and the tweet led to speculation about a takeover.

High-profile Twitter investors have called on the company to clean up its platform. Investor Chris Sacca said the continued issue of bots was "embarrassing" before revealing his firm had sold most of its stock.

pulse