Twitter Says Numbers ‘Accurate’: Why Is Rahul (19.6 M Followers) Upset

New Delhi: Twitter on Thursday responded to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s accusation that the microblogging platform was “restricting” his follower count.

A Twitter spokesperson said follower counts are a “visible” feature and are “meaningful” and “accurate”.

Rahul wrote to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on December 27 last year, alleging that the Indian government was behind restricting the number of his followers.

The Congress leader has 19.6 million followers on Twitter, which he said has hardly increased since his account was banned for eight days in August last year.

He wrote that he added four lakh new followers every month on an average in the first seven months of 2021. But that number has hardly increased after that.

Twitter locked Rahul’s account for eight days in August last year after he posted the picture of the family of a rape victim in Delhi. Twitter held that Rahul had violated its policies.

Responding to Rahul’s charge, a Twitter spokesperson on Tuesday said follower counts are a “visible” feature and are “meaningful” and “accurate”. “Twitter has a zero-tolerance approach to platform manipulation…We fight spam and malicious automation strategically and at scale with machine learning tools, and as part of those consistent and ongoing efforts to ensure a healthy service and credible accounts, follower counts can and do fluctuate,” said the spokesperson.

“We remove millions of accounts each week for violating our policies on platform manipulation and spam. You can take a look at the latest Twitter Transparency Center update for more context. While some accounts notice a minor difference, in certain cases, the number could be higher,” the spokesperson said.

Rahul alleged that the government was trying to “suppress” his reach on the platform.

“I want to bring your attention to what I believe is Twitter’s unwitting complicity in curbing free and fair speech in India… I have been reliably, albeit discreetly, informed by people at Twitter India that they are under immense pressure by the government to silence my voice,” he wrote.

“…it is perplexing that the growth in my Twitter followers has suddenly been suppressed,” Rahul stated in his letter.