Rahul Gandhi writes to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on ‘suppressed’ follower count

• Congress leader Rahul Gandhi wrote to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on the sudden drop in his followers.
• Gandhi highlighted that the follower growth depleted after August 2021.
• A Twitter spokesperson responded giving reasons behind the drop in followers.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi raised concerns over the growth of his stalled Twitter follower growth. In a letter to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, Gandhi explained how there has been a drastic drop in the growth of his Twitter followers since August 2021.

Gandhi highlighted how his Twitter account would gain an average of eight to 10 thousand new followers every day by giving the example of adding around 650,000 new followers in May 2021. But there was a sudden drop from August 2021 as the number of new followers fell to almost zero.

The reason behind this according to social media experts, Gandhi explained, could be due to the issues he raised on Twitter during these months. The incidents mentioned by Gandhi include him standing up for a rape victim’s family in Delhi, the farmers, and other human rights issues as well. Gandhi also said that he has been “reliable, albeit discreetly, informed by people at Twitter India that they are under immense pressure by the government to silence my voice.”

Gandhi also said that his Twitter account was blocked for a few days for no legitimate reason. The Twitter accounts of Rahul Gandhi along with around 5,000 Congress leaders and workers were locked temporarily in August last year for sharing images of the parents of a minor rape and murder victim in Delhi.


In response to the letter, a Twitter spokesperson quoted by ANI said, “ Follower counts are a visible feature & we want everyone to have confidence that numbers are meaningful & accurate. Twitter has a zero-tolerance approach to platform manipulation & spam.”

“We fight spam and malicious automation strategically and at scale with machine learning tools, and as part of those consistent and ongoing efforts to ensure a healthy service and credible accounts, follower counts can and do fluctuate,” the spokesperson added.

The sudden drop in the follower account according to Twitter is due to the massive cleanup of spam and bot accounts, or accounts that violate the platform’s policies. The spokesperson said that Twitter removes “millions of accounts each week”, and that some accounts may see a lower or higher count of account removal from the follower list.