Following Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter, the social media network is seeing enormous deactivations and dramatic changes in the following numbers.
According to NBC News, the following numbers of some of the most popular Twitter accounts have fluctuated, including former President Barack Obama’s, who lost 300,000 followers.
Twitter acknowledged the revelation, claiming that the reduction in numbers was natural rather than the result of bots being deactivated automatically, but did not reveal the number of recent deactivations.
The company said, “While we continue to take action on accounts that violate our spam policy which can affect follower counts, these fluctuations appear to largely be a result of an increase in new account creation and deactivation.”
The deactivations came as soon as Musk took over Twitter, a spokesperson at Twitter said that the accounts that experienced the most drop in followers were “high-profile accounts”.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla tweeted, “It really is something how conservative accounts are getting massive follower increases today.”
