According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the official Twitter account for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just lost over seven thousand followers. It’s like Thanos just snapped his fingers and … poof. They’re gone.
The Church isn’t the only account that’s been hit. The Trib reports the following:
- Mormon Newsroom ↓ about 6,000 followers.
- Utah Jazz ↓ about 16,000 followers.
- Imagine Dragons ↓ about 71,000 followers.
- Mitt Romney ↓ about 76,000 followers.
- The Trib itself ↓ 1,875 followers.
- KSL ↓ about 2,000 followers.
- Marie Osmond ↓ about 11,000 followers.
It’s like the world is ENDING! But not really. The sudden loss of followers (maybe you’ve experienced it yourself) is actually a good thing.
So what’s going on?
Twitter is cracking down on fake and suspicious accounts. If you’re active on Twitter you know exactly what kind of accounts I’m talking about. There are a lot of accounts out there that are totally inactive, spammy, or that are just bots.
In an effort to more accurately reflect how many followers an account has, Twitter is cutting the fat.
“Follower counts are a visible feature, and we want everyone to have confidence that the numbers are meaningful and accurate,” a Twitter blog post written by Vijaya Gadde, reads.
“Over the years, we’ve locked accounts when we detected sudden changes in account behavior. 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 (last 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.” Parenthetical added.
Well, that makes sense. Good for them.
So if you see your favorite Twitter accounts start to lose followers, don’t panic! It’s just the circle of life. The Church is still true.
