Yahoo Finance Twitter follower cull: Trump, Bieber and Fry impacted - but Theresa May bucks the trend
Celebrities on Twitter have suffered a cull in millions of their followers after the social media giant performed a purge on dormant and locked accounts this week.
US president Donald Trump, singers Katy Perry and Justin Bieber, former foreign secretary Boris Johnson and British actor Stephen Fry were among a multitude of Twitter celebrities to be affected by the cull.
Mr Trump lost over 304,140 followers from the start of the week, while Mr Johnson lost 28,961. Ms Perry, who has the most followed profile on the site, has lost 2.8 million followers, dropping from 109.6m to 106.7m. Mr Bieber, who has the second most followed account on the site, suffered the same fate, losing almost 2.7m followers to just over 104m. Former US president Barack Obama lost over 2m followers.
Mr Fry claimed he suffered a drop of 400,000 followers and said: "At least I can now relax in the knowledge that we scattered lonely survivors are the finest and fairest. We've lost the maniacs and trolls."
What the heckfire? 400,000 followers expunged! At a stroke? Nearly half a million of my devoted adherents were BOTS? It explains so much. At least I can now relax in the knowledge that we scattered lonely survivors are the finest and fairest. We’ve lost the maniacs and trolls.
— Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) July 13, 2018
Twitter has lost 7.7m followers in its own cull, dropping from 62,847,320 to 55,104,936, Friday's figures show.
Prime minister Theresa May has bucked the trend, growing her follower count by 1,641 to reach 576,790.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates lost 883,831 followers during the follower cull, dropping to 45.4m. Tesla founder Elon Musk lost 67,342 followers from 22.3m earlier this week.
Earlier this week, the social media giant said that some of the most popular Twitter accounts could see a drop of 6pc in follower figures, while most users will see a change of “four followers or fewer”.
Star Wars actor Mark Hamill said that he lost over 15,000 followers from his account. "Can I get a list of them or evidence of the criteria for their removal because I miss them already," he said.
Twitter just removed 15,000+ followers from my account presumably because they are "bots". Can I get a list of them or evidence of the criteria for their removal because I miss them already.#ByeByeBotsIHardlyKnewYe
— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) July 12, 2018
The follower review is part of Twitter's campaign for "accuracy" across the service, and is expected to continue until the end of this week.
Twitter is taking greater measures to lock questionable accounts, including locking an account if it detects sudden changes and contacting the owner to confirm they still have control over it.
These changes could include tweeting a large number of unsolicited replies to other people’s tweets, tweeting misleading links, or if a large number of people block the account after mentioning it.