Twitter Is Removing Millions Of Fake Followers From Users’ Lists

Twitter has begun removing millions of locked accounts from users’ lists of followers, in an attempt to crack down further on social media fraud.
The move will eliminate tens of millions of frozen accounts Twitter has deemed suspicious and reduce the total combined follower count on the platform by about 6 percent.

“Most people will see a change of four followers or fewer; others with larger follower counts will experience a more significant drop,” wrote Twitter’s legal, policy and trust and safety lead Vijaya Gadde in a corporate blog post. “We understand this may be hard for some, but we believe accuracy and transparency make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation.”

In May of this year Twitter announced that it was locking almost 10 million suspicious accounts per week and removing many for anti-spam policies. “Due to technology and process improvements during the past year, we are now removing 214% more accounts for violating our spam policies on a year-on-year basis,” Twitter said in a company blog post.