Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Lost 200,000 Followers in Fake-User Purge
(Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc.'s top executive didn't slide by unscathed in the social-media site's crackdown on fake followers.
Jack Dorsey, chief executive officer and co-founder, said in a tweet Thursday that he lost 200,000 followers, bringing his total down to 4 million, after Twitter made good on its pledge to remove suspicious accounts.
On Wednesday, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's head of legal, policy, trust and safety, said the company would begin removing "locked accounts from follower counts across profiles globally. As a result, the number of followers displayed on many profiles may go down." Locked accounts are those identified to have involved sudden suspicious changes in activity.
In his tweet Thursday, Dorsey said, “Action on this starts today.”
The company recently said it's identifying almost 10 million dubious accounts a week and is putting all accounts through a security check. The Washington Post reported last week that Twitter has suspended more than one million accounts a day in recent months, and the rate has more than doubled since October, when the company, under congressional pressure, revealed how Russians used fake accounts to manipulate the U.S. presidential election.
Twitter shares fell 5 percent on Monday on concern that removing millions of fake accounts would impede user growth. The stock gained 3.2 percent on Thursday.
Other high-profile figures also took a hit to their numbers of followers. President Donald Trump, one of the most prolific and high-profile tweeters, lost about 100,000 of his approximately 53.4 million Twitter followers, according to the Washington Post, and former President Barack Obama lost about 400,000 from his 104 million followers. Katy Perry, currently the most-followed person on Twitter, had more than 109 million followers Wednesday -- a number that plunged to about 108 million Thursday afternoon.
To contact the reporter on this story: Emily McCormick in New York at emccormick14@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz, Andrew Pollack
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
-
Signature Play: The Classic Cocktail Is Dead. Or Is It?
Classic cocktails are disappearing from India's cocktail menus. But they're still being ordered, taught to bartenders and borrowed from. So, who's really having the last drink?
-
A New Samvat Wishlist: Inclusive Prosperity And Human Development
India has strengthened its economic foundations through infrastructure, digital access and enterprise. Its next growth chapter must deepen productivity, create better livelihoods and widen participation in prosperity.
-
Love, Sex Aur Dhokha: The Audacious Plot To Spy On Jensen Huang
A Taipei dinner, a Singapore chip buyer and a suspected Chinese asset: inside the alleged spy operation that got close to NVIDIA's Jensen Huang.
-
Ten Things I Learnt This Samvat
Patience can be a trap. Cheap stocks can stay cheap. Leverage can wipe you out. What did Samvat 2082 teach us? Niraj Shah writes on 10 lessons from the year gone by.
-
Talking Points This Week: Tech Nerves, FII Buying, And A Faraway Banking Shock
The global markets are not shining this Diwali. The exception in the large markets is, India.
-
Midterm Rally Lasted A Day. The Hard Reality Of A Divided US May Last Two Years | Opinion
Between a contested AI boom, a debt ceiling that arrives in 2027 and a president with every incentive to act alone, the next two years may prove more volatile than the first day's rally suggests.
-
Blue Wave Will Derail the AI Trade but Won't Dismantle the AI Era | Unhedged Position
The Democrats' sweep of the US Congress will see politics collide with economic forces both over the long and short term.
-
It's Time To Take The GST Council's Bet On Trust Global
Payment records can prove India's services exports, and clear, proportionate rules can bring foreign digital sellers into the tax net.
-
Opinion | India at 38: From Innovation Overperformer to Innovation Powerhouse
India now has 453 VC-backed deep science startups, 18 of them late-stage, after 117 percent growth since 2020. Laurus Labs, at USD 9.3 billion, is the most valuable deep science company in any middle-income economy outside China.
