Large Twitter accounts have seen a massive drop off in their follower counts after the social network stopped including accounts that have been locked for bad behaviour.
According to the company, most users will only lose four followers of fewer due to the change, but more popular users like Donald Trump and Barack Obama have lost hundreds of thousands.
“You should be confident that the follower numbers presented across Twitter are meaningful and accurate,” said Vijaya Gadde, the legal, policy and trust & safety lead at Twitter said. “We’re introducing a change to follower counts as part of our work to make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation.”
Twitter accounts can be locked for a number of reason, including a large volume of replies or mentions or tweeting out “misleading” links.