New Delhi: Former Congress president and Lok Sabha MP Rahul Gandhi had accused micro-blogging site Twitter of working under pressure from the Modi government. Rahul had said in his complaint letter that his followers were being decreased. Replying to this, Twitter has now said that the number of followers is public and they do not tamper with it. Twitter has instructed Rahul Gandhi to look into the company's policies while telling him about manipulation and spam.
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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi wrote to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on 27th December 2021, stating that "it is perplexing that the growth in my Twitter followers has suddenly been suppressed." pic.twitter.com/xhbT1UWxXh
— ANI (@ANI) January 27, 2022
Following the Congress leader's allegations, the Twitter spokesperson said that a decrease or increase in the number of followers is normal. The number of followers of a Twitter account is visible to everyone. This number is accurate. Twitter said, "We want everyone to be confident that the number of followers is meaningful and accurate. Twitter adopts a policy of zero-tolerance towards manipulation and spam on its platform.'' In a letter to Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal in December, Rahul Gandhi said, "I want to draw your attention to the fact that I think Twitter has "unintentional collusion" in curbing free and fair speech in India.''
Not only this, Rahul Gandhi wrote in his letter, "I have been told reliably by the people that there is a lot of pressure on Twitter India by the government to suppress my voice. Rahul Gandhi said that the ideological battle between liberal democracy and authoritarianism is going on all over the world on social media platforms. In such a situation, the responsibility of the people sitting at the top of companies like Twitter increases.'' Rahul Gandhi said, "It is shocking that the growth of my Twitter followers was stopped suddenly.'' Rahul Gandhi said, "I have 2 crore followers on Twitter. My Twitter handle is active and this year in July 2021, I have been growing 8-10 thousand followers every day.''
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Follower counts are a visible feature&we want everyone to have confidence that numbers are meaningful&accurate. Twitter has zero-tolerance approach to platform manipulation&spam: Twitter spox on Rahul Gandhi's letter to Twitter stating that no.of his followers seeing a drop (1/3) pic.twitter.com/HiU0QORYcR
— ANI (@ANI) January 27, 2022
Responding to Rahul Gandhi's complaint letter, the Twitter spokesperson said, "We want the followers to be real. Twitter has no place for manipulation and spam. We sort out massive bot followers and spam every week through machine learning tools. Millions of accounts are deleted every week for violating Twitter's policies. In such a situation, the number of followers may decrease. You can take a look at the latest Twitter Transparency Center update for more reference. Although some accounts show slight differences, in some cases the number may be high.''
In fact, in August, Rahul Gandhi shared a photo of the parents of the 9-year-old rape victim on Twitter. The BJP had attacked Rahul Gandhi accusing him of being insensitive and taking political advantage in such a case. After this, Rahul Gandhi's Twitter handle was temporarily banned. However, the ban was later lifted from Rahul Gandhi's account. Rahul Gandhi had said that he had shared the photo with the permission of the girl's parents.
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