The development will affect many Twitter users in Nigeria who have inflated their followerships by paying for automated accounts to fake social media influence.
Twitter is taking down fake and suspicious accounts in a major operation to combat Spam and improve its efforts to build global trust.
The development will affect many Twitter users in Nigeria who have inflated their followerships by paying for automated accounts to fake social media influence.
Vijaya Gadde, Twitter President in charge Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead, said the clampdown is necessary to make sure every conversation and followers counts on the platform.
“Over the years, we’ve locked accounts when we detected sudden changes in account behaviour.
“In these situations, we reach out to the owners of the accounts and unless they validate the account and reset their passwords, we keep them locked with no ability to log in.”
“This week, we’ll be removing these locked accounts from follower counts across profiles globally."
As a result, the number of followers displayed on many profiles may go down,” she wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
Influencers’ account are shrinking
Some of the world's biggest celebrities have lost millions of Twitter followers after the company cracked down on "locked" accounts.
US singer Katy Perry and Lady Gaga lost about 2.5 million followers. Barack Obama reportedly went down 2.1 million while Nigerian journalist Tolu Ogunlesi said he has lost about 3,000 followers.