By Pascal Oparada
Top brands, celebrities, and influencers have seen a massive slash on their follower numbers due to a Twitter purge that began Thursday, July 12, 2018.
The Twitter purge was coined by users when the platform began removing inactive and fake accounts and those looked for suspicious purposes from the platform.
The company announced Wednesday that it would begin removing millions of inactive and fake accounts from users’ follower numbers in the interest of “building trust.” This means nearly all Twitter users will see at least small declines in their follower counts this week, and higher-profile accounts could see significant drops.
All in all, the update will remove “tens of millions” of accounts from users’ follower number and impact around six percent of all follows on Twitter, according to a spokesperson for the company.
Users took to the platform and coined the hashtag #TwitterPurge to discuss the ‘cleansing’ going on the micro-blogging site.
Katy Perry, who is the most followed person on Twitter, suffered a massive drop of 1.5 million followers.
The singer saw her follower count slashed by 1.4 percent from 109.61 million down to 108.1 million followers.
Newly-engaged Bieber suffered a dip of 1.3 percent after losing 1.4 million followers, bringing his new total to 105.31million followers.
Rihanna, Ellen DeGeneres, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga also lost around two million followers each, according to Variety.
But former US president Barack Obama beat them after his followers shrank by 2.1 million from his previous 103.63 million, leaving him at 101 million.
United States President, Donald Trump, lost a paltry 340,000 followers, taking him from 53.4 million to 53.1 million.
Those affected include the Youtube account, down by two million, Cristiano Ronaldo, down by more than one million.
Surprisingly, it was Twitter’s primary account that took the brunt of the impact – dropping 12 percent from 62.85 million to 55.35 million followers.
In Nigeria, influencers like Japhet Omojuwa saw his followers drop by 5,000 and political analyst, Kayode Ogudamisi, saw his number shrink by 4,000.
Users celebrated for surviving the purge with many showing screenshots of their follower numbers after the exercise on Friday.
Twitter users in Nigeria were elated with one tweeting, “if you see this message, I survived the great #TwitterPurge 2018.
Another user tweeted, “Twitter Will Began Purging Up To 9.9 Million Fake Accounts, Trolls, and Bots Today in Hopes Of Making Twitter a Happier and Safer Place. So All Those Accounts That Are On Here Just To Pick Fights or Start Lies Will Be Gone.”
Earlier this year, a New York Times investigation revealed that millions of these fake accounts were created to help celebs sell products and boost follower counts for influencers.
But Twitter claims that this latest clampdown mainly targeted accounts created by real people. There’s also no evidence that these celebs purchased the accounts they just lost.
“Our ongoing work to improve the health of conversations on Twitter encompasses all aspects of our service,” said Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal, policy and trust and safety lead in a blog post announcing the purge.
“This specific update is focused on followers because it is one of the most visible features on our service and often associated with account credibility. Once an account is locked, it cannot Tweet, like or Retweet and it is not served ads.”
Twitter said the change shouldn’t hit its monthly or daily active user numbers – a statement clearly directed at worried investors.
Twitter as a whole boasts 336 million monthly active users, though it’s unclear how many members it has overall.
