PM Modi, Rahul Gandhi lose thousands of followers — Twitter's safety crackdown
- by Gwen Vasquez
- in Life&Culture
- — Jul 13, 2018
Ironically, the purge's biggest victim is Twitter's own primary account which had to bid farewell to 7.5 million followers, a 12% drop from 62.85 million to 55.35 million.
Twitter began culling locked accounts from follower figures Thursday, and as the process continues to the numbers could decline further.
President Donald Trump, one of the most prolific and high-profile tweeters, lost about 100 000 of his approximately 53.4 million Twitter followers, according to the Washington Post, and former President Barack Obama lost about 400 000 from his 104 million followers.
By 5 p.m., President Trump's @realDonaldTrump account had lost about 300,000 followers, bringing his total down to a still impressive 53.1 million.
Twitter said it had taken the decision due to its "ongoing and global effort to build trust".
Prime Minister Modi, according to socialblade.com, lost 2, 84,746 followers and now has 43.1 million followers.
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The number of Modi's followers went down to 43.1 million from 43.4 million.
The drop in the follower count, however, has nothing to do with popularity of the Modi government.
The move is aimed at users reportedly inflating their followers on the platform with automated or fake accounts, buying the appearance of social influence to "bolster their political activism, business endeavours or entertainment careers".
Users with locked accounts who have not reset their passwords in more than a month are not included in monthly active user (MAU) or daily active user (DAU) counts, according to news reports.
"Most people will see a change of four followers or fewer; others with larger follower counts will experience a more significant drop".
Also, the accounts that Twitter would be purging are locked accounts that the company "detected sudden changes in account behaviour", and the owners didn't validate their accounts. Shah Rukh Khan lost nearly 3.5 lakh followers (35.7 million) while Amitabh Bachchan registered an even bigger loss, at over 4 lakh (34.5 million). Some celebrities lost the equivalent of a city's or even a small nation's worth of followers in mere minutes.
