Explained: Why some Twitter users are losing followers

Twitter has met with several complaints from users, including Anupam Kher, who say they have lost followers in hordes in recent days. The microblogging site, on its part, has said the dip in followers is part of a regular clean-up.

Actor Anupam Kher had last week asked the social media company if he had lost 80,000 followers in 36 hours as a result of a software glitch.

Many others responded to his tweet, saying they had been facing a similar issue at varying degrees.

Regular practice

However, Twitter has said the culling was likely a part of a regular practice that it undertook to remove accounts that seem to be inauthentic, deceptive or inactive.

“We regularly challenge accounts to validate or confirm account details, like password or phone number, to better protect the integrity of the conversation on Twitter,” a spokesperson said in an emailed response.

“Until accounts confirm additional information, they will be in a locked state and will not count toward follower counts. This means, follower counts may drop.”

This basically means that Twitter asks users to regularly check in and confirm their details to verify that they are actual users and not accounts created to artificially increase follower counts or a range of other prohibited activities on the site.

Platform manipulation and fake accounts

According to Twitter’s platform manipulation and spam policy, attempts to “engage in bulk, aggressive, or deceptive activity that misleads others and/or disrupts their experience” come under platform manipulation. This includes everything from commercially-driven spam and fabricated conversations to fake accounts and coordinated attempts to create an unsafe environment for users.

Twitter checks for a range of factors to identify such content and the accounts associated with it, including duplicating another account’s followers using automation, tweeting with excessive, unrelated hashtags in one or many tweets and posting misleading or deceptive links.