NAN
U.S. President Donald Trump, his predecessor Barack Obama and American singer Katy Perry , the most followed celebrities on Twitter, lost an astonishing number of followers on Thursday following Twitter’s account purge.
Twitter announced on Wednesday that users would see a drop in their follower accounts on Thursday as the company clamped down on ‘problematic’ and ‘fake’ accounts.
Trump, who is well known for his controversial twitter account @realDonaldTrump, saw his follower count drop by about 300,000, from 53.4 million to 53.1 million.
Also, Barack Obama’s, who tweets @barackobama, saw his total followers shrink by 2.1 million, from 103.63 million to 101.5 million.
Meanwhile, Singer Katy Perry, who has the most-followed account on Twitter, lost 1.5 million followers, dropping from 109.61 million to 108.1 million followers.
Follower counts for Justin Bieber fell from 106.71 million to 101.50 million while Rihanna was down to 88.44 million followers from 89 million.
Television host Ellen DeGeneres dropped from 78.09 million to 76.10 million followers and Taylor Swift fell from 85.57 million to 83.27 million, while Lady Gaga’s followers declined from 78.97 million to 77.47 million.
Twitter’s official account on the social network was not spared from the purge as it shed 7.5 million fake accounts to drop from 62.85 million to 55.35 million as at press time.
According to its official statement, the app will begin removing tens of millions of suspicious accounts from users’ followers signalling a major new effort to restore trust on the popular platform.
The affected accounts will include those that have been hijacked to spread abuse, misinformation and propaganda.
