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If you just lost lots of your Twitter followers, you’re not alone
As part of Twitter Inc.’s ongoing initiative to make its platform safer and less plagued by bots, the company has now started to remove all locked accounts from follower lists.
Accounts that were locked, Twitter explained Wednesday, had been locked for “tweeting a large volume of unsolicited replies or mentions, tweeting misleading links, or if a large number of accounts block the account after mentioning them.”
In a blog post, Twitter said this will affect most people, with the average person losing four followers but larger accounts losing many more. In all, the move will affect 6 percent of followers on the site.
This week we’ll be removing locked Twitter accounts (locked when we detect suspicious changes in behavior) from follower counts across profiles globally. The number of followers displayed on many profiles may go down. #health https://t.co/JGmE4ofoZ2
— jack (@jack) July 11, 2018
Indeed, it’s reported that President Donald Trump took a big hit, losing about 100,000 followers while former president Barack Obama lost a staggering 400,000. Twitter said that if an account is locked, the owner of that account will receive an email from the company. If that isn’t answered, it will remain locked and will be removed from follower accounts.
“You should be confident that the follower numbers presented across Twitter are meaningful and accurate,” said Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal, policy and safety lead. “We’re introducing a change to follower counts as part of our work to make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation.”
Twitter’s decision, on the back of pressure from the government to clean itself up, hasn’t come without consequences. After suspending millions of accounts for abuse or for suspicion of being bots, Twitter stock tanked soon after.
Nonetheless, Twitter has had a good run of late, reporting quarterly profits and healthy user growth. User metrics, Twitter said, won’t be affected by the move because locked accounts that haven’t changed their password recently aren’t included in the active user count.
Image: Esther Vargas via Flickr
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