Twitter purge hits Uhuru, Ruto and bloggers Nyakundi, Dela
Controversial blogger Cyprian Nyakundi's Twitter account. His followers had reduced from a whopping 1.2 million to 694,000 by July 13, 2018 midday. PHOTO | TWITTER
What you need to know:
The crackdown did not spare two leading Kenyan social media influencers Cyprian Nyakundi and Christian Dela.
Both controversial bloggers, Nyakundi and Dela have each seen their numbers whittle down by half overnight.
Nyakundi’s followers have reduced from a whopping 1.2 million to 696,000 while Dela’s numbers now stand at 521,000 from an impressive one million.
President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto are among the casualties of the ongoing war on dormant and fake followers by social media giant Twitter.
President Kenyatta, who is among the most followed persons on Twitter in Africa lost 16,071 of his 3,234,935 followers while Mr Ruto unloaded 7,211 followers.
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The deputy president’s now has 1,968,355 followers.
Nasa leader Raila Odinga, however, saw his following jump from 1,923,245 to 1,923,428 despite the purge.
The crackdown did not spare two leading Kenyan social media influencers Cyprian Nyakundi and Christian Dela.
Both controversial bloggers, Nyakundi and Dela have each seen their numbers whittle down by half overnight.
Nyakundi’s followers have reduced from a whopping 1.2 million to 694,000 while Dela’s numbers now stand at 521,000 from an impressive one million.
The two are among the so-called influencers who are paid huge amounts of cash to post content on their social media.
Twitter made the move as part of its “ongoing and global effort to build trust and encourage healthy conversation on Twitter”.
“Follower counts are a visible feature, and we want everyone to have confidence that the numbers are meaningful and accurate,” said Twitter in a blog.
The microblogging site explained that it has been locking accounts when it detected sudden changes in account behaviour.
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“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,” said Twitter.
Twitter had warned that as a result of the move, the number of followers displayed on many profiles may go down.
“Most people will see a change of four followers or fewer; others with larger follower counts will experience a more significant drop. We understand this may be hard for some, but we believe accuracy and transparency make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation,” it explained.
The two were trolled on Twitter after they lost numbers.
The changes also affected other individuals globally.
Former US President Obama lost 2.5 million followers; Trump saw his follower count drop by roughly 400,000 and Kim Kardashian unloaded 1.7 million followers in the last day.
