President Donald Trump — and millions of other devoted Twitter users — are about to lose some followers.
Twitter announced on Wednesday that it would begin purging suspicious and dormant accounts from users' follower counts.
It’s the latest step Twitter is taking to clean up its platform and promote what CEO Jack Dorsey calls “conversational health.”
Twitter users should see their follower counts decrease this week. The typical user will lose fewer than five followers, while large accounts could experience a “more significant drop,” Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head counsel, said in a blog post.
“Followercounts are a visible feature, and we want everyone to have confidence that the numbers are meaningful and accurate,” Gadde said.
The move also means a user’s influence will be better reflected on Twitter, since follower counts will be more accurate. Some of these accounts may have once belonged to actual people before being taken over by hackers.
However, the correction to users’ follower lists excludes spam bots, which Gadde said Twitter’s technology was getting better at identifying and quickly shutting down.
The adjustments to follower counts comes one week after Twitter disclosed that its technology was now capable of identifying more than 9.9 million potential spam accounts per week and shutting them down.
Twitter also said it was removing 214 percent more spam accounts compared to this time last year. The company said it was able to achieve this through improvements to its processes and technology.