Twitter just posted a significant decline in users. It shed a stonking nine million of them in the last quarter.

(Users totalled a peak of 336 million earlier this year, so these new numbers put the user base below the 330 million mark.)

Despite this news, the social media platform has moved into profit for the first time in 10 years, while its share price has just ticked upwards. What is going on?

The reason for the recent drop, according to Twitter, is that it has been “cleaning up” its user base.

It has booted off Russian bots – the ones that tweeted they were setting fire to their Nike trainers after the Colin Kaepernick ads. It has also kicked off spammers – the ones that push all those diet supplements.

Result: fewer users, but more money. In the past four quarters, Twitter’s net profit has risen to just over $1bn (£785m). In the four quarters before that, Twitter lost $367m.

Twitter’s business has stabilised. Yay! But wait – what’s this? The social fabric in coming apart, you say. Could these two facts be in any way linked?

I think, under the flag of free speech, Twitter has put profits before the well-being of its own nation.

To read the rest of this piece, see my column in this weeks’ Campaign. 

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