Many sports industry entities will see a noticeable drop in the number of their Twitter followers following a purge this week of locked accounts from the social media platform. The effort involves a removal of locked accounts that showed sudden changes in behavior on Twitter and then did not respond to requests to validate themselves. Twitter said the initiative involves tens of millions of locked accounts representing about 6% of follows on Twitter. The move follows a reported suspension of 70 million fake and suspicious accounts in May and June. Given the large presence of sports on Twitter, the industry is expected to be particularly impacted by the purge. “Most people will see a change in four followers or fewer; others with larger follower counts will experience a more significant drop,” said Twitter Legal, Policy, Trust & Safety Lead Vijaya Gadde in a blog posting today. “We understand this may be hard for some, but we believe accuracy and transparency make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation. Though the most significant changes are happening in the next few days, follower counts may continue to change more regularly as part of our ongoing work to proactively identify and challenge problematic accounts.”
