Trump Humiliated After Twitter Exposes Hundreds Of Thousands Of His Fake Followers

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The tweeter-in-chief has always been ultra-competitive. Add to that, he has been addicted to his Twitter account, since he took office. Now, he has had to say goodbye to a dramatic number of his followers. He will not be happy.

The social media corporation has decided to purge massive numbers of Twitter followers. Although these accounts had been frozen and inactive for a variety of reasons, the company never removed them as followers. It said that it made personalities happy to have their numbers look higher.

Donald Trump saw a significant drop. Twitter purged around 100,000 of his followers.Yet, they were not alone. The company cleaned out the dead wood from the accounts of “celebrities, journalists, and leaders in politics and business,” according to The Washington Post.

That might not be all bad. The president of these United States has Congress running from his tweets with dreaded fear. The purge might put a dent into POTUS’ ability to fell a politician with one tweet or drop a corporation’s Wall Street numbers.

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Twitter’s security team froze accounts for any type of suspicious behavior. That means, the accounts could have been unusable for a substantial amount of time.

Twitter’s Legal, Policy, Trust, and Safety Lead Vijaya Gadde said that some of the company’s users would be disappointed. However, the San Francisco-based company believed removing the inactive accounts was necessary:

‘Most people will see a change of four followers or fewer; others with larger follower counts will experience a more significant drop. We understand this may be hard for some, but we believe accuracy and transparency make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation.’

Gadde said:

‘Until we confirm that everything is ok with the account, we lock it, which makes them unable to tweet or see ads.’

Researcher with Data & Society, Joan Donovan is an expert in online disinformation. She suggested that Twitter allowed the frozen accounts to remain in place, because it pleased the businesses’ users:

‘For years people have wanted Twitter to get serious about malicious bots, spam, and other problems. But when the company went public, growth metrics were all that mattered.’

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Twitter has a total of 336 million users every month. The company said purging the accounts was a matter of hard choices as part of its cleanup efforts.

The social media firm said it was honeycombed with trolling, spam, and other unpleasant practices. As a results, an individual’s popularity would have been inflated.

Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, said that it had suspended over one million accounts per day. This was part of its campaign to slow down the disinformation and move toward “healthy conversations.”

Usually, the way Twitter tracked suspicious behavior was when it noticed a sudden alteration in the account’s activity. This could show up in a variety of clues:

‘This could include tweeting a large volume of unsolicited replies, tweeting misleading links, or if a large number of users block an account after being mentioned by it. The company sometimes locks an account if officials detect that the user is inputting email and password combinations from other services posted online.’

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The frozen accounts never appeared in the monthly and daily active user numbers reported to Wall Street. Therefore, the business’ numbers would not change after the purge, but the bad news had rocked the corporation’s stock prices on Wall Street.

Twitter often received criticism for allegedly taking political sides. After the purge is complete, the number of those accusations will probably increase.

Featured Image via Getty Images/AFP Contributor.