Twitter is hardly the soaring condor of the digital advertising space. The US microblogging business garnered $4.5bn in ad revenue last year —about 4 per cent of what Facebook owner Meta made. Google, for its part, pulled in $209.5bn.

But being a featherweight is not such a bad thing at the moment. Apple started rolling out a new privacy policy last April. This prevents apps from collecting data on iPhone users without their consent. That has made it much harder for companies to sell targeted advertising.

Last week, Meta told investors Apple’s privacy changes could cost it $10bn in ad sales this year. Combined with concerns about increased competition from TikTok, this prompted investors to wipe more than $220bn from the company’s market valuation.