New Delhi, Jul 13(India Today): Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor seem to be the most-affected politicians in India following micro-blogging site Twitter's ongoing crackdown on fake and automated accounts.
As a part of its ongoing efforts to build trusted conversations, Twitter has limited the visibility of suspicious accounts on its platform. As a result, several Twitter accounts have seen a significant drop in the number of followers.
According to data provided by SocialBlade at the time of writing this report, PM Modi's personal Twitter handle (@narendramodi) has lost as many as 2,84,746 followers in just one day. On July 12, his Twitter account had 43,383,525 followers which dropped to 43,098,779 today (July 13). He also has an official handle (@PMOIndia) which lost 140,635 followers.
The next most affected Indian politician seems to be Congress leader Shashi Tharoor who lost 1,51,509 followers. Tharoor, who is popular for his eloquent tweets, now has 6,587,285 followers as compared to 6,738,794 yesterday.
CEO Jack Dorsey had informed yesterday that Twitter has started an operation to remove all the locked accounts from follower counts across profiles globally. Interestingly, he himself has lost around 2,00,000 followers since then.
The official handles of the Bhartiya Janata Party (@BJP4India) and the Congress (@INCIndia) have also lost 40,787 and 15,731 followers respectively.
Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi), who has taken the charge of the Congress in December, 2017, has lost 17,503 followers. He has 7,219,319 followers right now.
Minister Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj), who has been very active on social media, has lost 74,132 followers.
Among other leaders, Amit Shah has lost 33,363 followers and Arvind Kejriwal has lost 91,555.
The followers list if Arun Jaitley dropped by 51,324 from 13,055,674 to 13,004,350.
Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has also lost 21,878 followers in a day.
Over the years Twitter has locked accounts when it has detected changes in the "account's behaviour". The company is now in the process of removing these accounts from the platform.