Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan's extended family on Twitter dropped by over 424,000, while Shah Rukh Khan's followers depleted by over 362,141 and Salman Khan lost 340,884 followers, among other film celebrities as a result of the ''sanitisation'' of the micro-blogging platform. Twitter decided to sanitise the platform by removing inactive and locked accounts. So, a lot of popular names from the film industry ended up with reduced followers.
SocialBlade.com that tracks the number of Twitter followers on a daily basis, had a tab on the count, and said Aamir Khan lost 316,900-plus followers, while Priyanka Chopra lost 354,830 followers and Deepika Padukone lost 288,298.
The micro-blogging platform was yet to come up with an official statement on this.
Twitter earlier this week announced it will remove locked accounts - which are disabled owing to suspicious activity - from follower counts across profiles globally. The locked accounts are different from spam or bots and in most cases, these accounts were created by real people.
Twitter audit
But we're pretty sure these celebrities aren't paying for these fake followers. Maybe having a large following automatically brings with it the risk of attracting more fake followers.
Amitabh Bachchan, who has 34.4 million followers on Twitter, recently threatened to quit the microblogging platform after his number of followers suddenly dipped. His followers have also been tweeting about the reduction in followers using the hashtag #TwitterSteals Followers.
In his urge to retain the top position, Big B fails to realise that he is indirectly promoting fake accounts. Large numbers aren't everything. What's the point of being the most-followed celebrity if a majority of those followers are fake?
Fake accounts pose a legitimate threat because they can be used to manipulate political events, and amplify the reach of certain messages through retweets and likes.
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