Twitter's ongoing efforts to keep a healthy conversation on its platform and purge it of abuse recently led to the suspension of more than 70 million accounts in May and June. This week, the service's crackdown on suspicious activities may result in a drop in your Twitter follower count.
In a blog post announcing Twitter's new policing move, Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead, said the company will exclude accounts it previously locked for suspicious behavior from your publicly visible follower count. The goal of the new move is to make sure that number is "meaningful and accurate." Gadde added:
We understand this may be hard for some, but we believe accuracy and transparency make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation.
Twitter has been locking users out of their accounts in recent years once it catches irregular activities involving a particular account. Those users remain barred from their accounts unless they validate their identity and change their password. With the new rule, those locked accounts will now be removed from your follower count even if the account owner in question did not unfollow you.
The change will be rolling out worldwide and is expected to have a significant impact on accounts with a larger number of followers while most other users may only see a count drop of up to four followers.
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