Musk says prepare for follower drop

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Thursday said the micro-blogging platform has started “purging” a lot of spam and scam accounts, so the users might see a “count drop” in their followers.

He tweeted: “Twitter is purging a lot of spam/scam accounts right now, so you may see your follower count drop.” Several users expressed their thoughts on Musk’s action. While one user commented, “Dude that’s like all my followers”, another said, “exactly.. but good to lose followers that were never actually followers..lol.”

Before the Twitter takeover, Musk had claimed in April this year, that he would “defeat” the “spam bots” on micro-blogging or “die trying.”

He tweeted: “If our Twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!”

Later on May 29, 2022, Musk raised the presence of fake/spam accounts or “bots” on Twitter, saying the micro-blogging platform has ‘very bot-friendly’ rules. By that time, Twitter said less than 5 per cent of accounts on its platforms could be fake.

Musk had asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to probe whether the platform’s claim on the number of its user base is true.

While the micro-blogging platform said in its SEC filing that less than 5 per cent of its monetisable daily active users (mDAUs) were fake, Musk believed the number of bots was four times higher.