Twitter’s shares nosedived on Monday as investors balked at a crackdown on fake accounts that may affect the social network’s user numbers.

Shares fell by more than 8pc after reports that the company is deleting more than 1m accounts a day, double the rate it was removing them at a year ago.

The drop threatened to reverse a searing run that had seen the company’s shares double in six months, after the Washington Post reported that it would lead the number of monthly users Twitter reports to shareholders to decline when it reports second-quarter results later this month.

Investors have cheered signs that Twitter was finally getting to grips with the bots and abusive accounts to flood the website with hate speech, but do not appear to have reckoned with the fact that this might hurt user growth.

Twitter fought back against the claims. Its chief financial officer Ned Segal said that the majority of accounts removed by the social network were less than 30 days old, meaning they would not count in its monthly user numbers.