San Francisco, CA – Conservatives across Twitter are reporting massive drops in their follower count as Twitter enacts widespread actions against accounts.
Blue Lives Matter’s Twitter account dropped by 5,600 followers in a 24 hour period Friday.
The drop in followers was mostly in several sudden bursts as Twitter took action against accounts.
At one point, Blue Lives Matter recorded a drop of 900 followers within 5 minutes, followed by a couple of hours of losing only a small handful of followers.
About 1% of our followers and 1% of the accounts we're following just disappeared. These screenshots were taken 5 minutes apart. pic.twitter.com/S9wemWUKtH
— Blue Lives Matter (@bluelivesmtr) January 9, 2021
Other accounts from conservatives appear to show similar trends.
Lot of folks disappeared in the last 3 days … pic.twitter.com/nolsesHy6z
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) January 9, 2021
Yesterday I had 2.7 million followers. This morning I have 2.5 million. Fear and fascism go hand in hand. What are you so afraid of, Jack?
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 9, 2021
I’ve lost over 60,000 followers in a period of 3 days.
— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) January 9, 2021
Twitter responded to backlash by claiming that they routinely ask account owners to verify their details, and that the affected accounts are locked and removed from follower counts until they do.
“To clear up confusion about fluctuations in follower counts: In order to prevent spam, we regularly challenge accounts to confirm details like email and phone number,” Twitter said in a tweet Friday. “Until that info is confirmed, these accounts aren’t included in follower counts.”
However, the massive action appears anything but routine, and comes shortly after President Donald Trump was permanently banned from the platform.
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Twitter said in a tweet Friday.
President Trump was also banned from Facebook following the Capitol riot, but he continued to communicate on Parler.
Google announced Friday that they had removed the Parler app from the Google app store for not censoring speech.
“In order to protect user safety on Google Play, our longstanding policies require that apps displaying user-generated content have moderation policies and enforcement that removes egregious content like posts that incite violence,” a Google spokesperson said, according to Axios.
Apple gave Parler a 24 hour warning to implement content moderation or the app will also be removed from Apple’s app store.
With the Parler app removed from the app stores, iPhone and Android users will be unable to download the app.
Anybody who already has the app can continue using it, but Parler will be unable to provide updates and over time the app may stop functioning.
Holly Matkin
