Twitter to Remove Fake Followers

Twitter with 336 million users logging every month is going to remove millions of fake accounts from today. It is done to ensure its credibility and trust among the real account holders mainly the celebrities, politicians and other important persons across the world. Twitter is mainly used by the people of importance and therefore it has become necessary for the social site Twitter to undertake such cleanliness drive on its platform from time to time.

The reform is undertaken with the aim to stop the social media fraud, where many users have increased their following by creating fake accounts and followers and also by buying the appearance of social influence in order to enhance their political activism, business interest or career in entertainment industry.

After announcing the decision, the Twitter is soon starting the operation and it is expected that by today, it is going to launch its cleaning mission, which is going to affect those users who bought fake followers and therefore with the removal of many such fake accounts it is expected that many are going to witness the number of their followers fall by the end of the day.

Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy, Trust, and Safety Lead in Twitter, has acknowledged in a blog post that some Twitter users might be disappointed, but also said that this move is very much necessary in order to get back the trust of the people, “Most people will see a change of four followers or fewer; others with larger follower counts will experience a more significant drop. We understand this may be hard for some, but we believe accuracy and transparency make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation”.

Supposedly, it is going to reduce nearly 6 percent of the total followers and users on Twitter.

Del Harvey, Twitter's Vice President for Trust and Safety said, “We don't want to incentivise the purchase of followers and fake accounts to artificially inflate follower counts, because it's not an accurate measure of someone's influence on the platform or influence in the world. We think it's a really important and meaningful metric, and we want people to have confidence that these are engaged users that are following other accounts”.

Also, the officials at Twitter have accepted the increasing number of fake accounts and followers, and that Twitter is dealing with the problem was slow so far and it had affected its legitimate users and therefore the move has become a necessity of late. The fake accounts and users on Twitter are disturbing its advertisers, who depend on social media influencers and celebrities to endorse and promote their brands and products to the followers in order to reach the customers virtually.

In January this year, an investigation revealed that a small company in Florida is selling fake followers and other important social media engagements to thousands of Twitter users across the world, which include politicians, actors, models, and authors. The revelation was followed by investigations and demand by Congress for intervention by Federal Trade Commission.