Twitter ‘Bug’ Removes Millions of Locked Accounts from the Platform

• Twitter attempted to make follower counts on accounts more accurate by removing locked accounts.
• Some users have lost millions of followers including the platform’s own account.
• Following the removal, the social media platform said it was caused by a bug.

Twitter has been actively trying to improve the state of the platform that has been criticized for being plagued by fake news and bot accounts. The platform has removed millions of accounts from the platform earlier this year and is constantly trying to remove bots and hate speech from the platform. The social media platform is under scrutiny from not only users but also investors and even the U. S. Congress.

On Friday, some accounts lost up to millions of Twitter followers. The official Twitter account lost 2.4 million followers ironically. The move was made without any prior announcement, and users on the platform were left confused. The social media platform has blamed the issue on a bug that has reportedly been fixed.

In July, Twitter announced that it would stop counting accounts that are locked as followers to make the follower count more accurate for users. Accounts can often get unlocked if a password reset is triggered and according to ad fraud researcher Social Puncher, a third of the accounts that were hidden from follower counts were restored in October. However, shortly after the accounts, they got locked again last week.

It is assumed that the accounts that were removed by Twitter are predominantly ones that are used for boosting the follower counts of accounts and are paid for via advertising services. In the removal process, a number of legitimate accounts were removed, and after the users were notified, a password reset caused their accounts to be restored and accounted for in the follower counts of affected users.

The removed accounts share a number of traits according to Social Puncher. The affected users have little to no profile details, posts and follow a large number of accounts without having a follower count of their own.

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