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Bulletins

Twitter will pay $809 million t​o settle a 2016 class-action suit.

Shareholders alleged that Twitter executives inflated the company's growth outlook in 2014, causing "economic harm."

Twitter

In the suit, Twitter shareholders accused the company and its executives of making "false statements" about the company's growth.

Photo: Joshua Hoehne/Unsplash

Twitter said Monday that it had agreed to pay $809.5 million to settle a class-action suit filed in 2016, in which Twitter shareholders accused the company and its executives of making "false statements" about the company's growth, which led to "artificially inflated prices" that caused "economic harm and damages" to shareholders at the time.

The plaintiffs in the case alleged that at a 2014 analyst meeting, Twitter executives said they expected the company's monthly active users to grow "to over 550 million [MAUs] in the intermediate term and … over a billion … [MAUs] over the longer term." But Twitter's actual growth in 2014 and early 2015 fell well short of those expectations, the suit alleges.

In a press release announcing the settlement, Twitter wrote that the defendants, including Twitter and former CEO Dick Costolo and former Twitter CFO Anthony Noto, "deny any wrongdoing or any other improper actions."

Issie Lapowsky

Issie Lapowsky ( @issielapowsky ) is Protocol's chief correspondent, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. She also oversees Protocol's fellowship program. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University's Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing.

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