Indian politician Rahul Gandhi is miffed that his Twitter following is not growing, writes to CEO

Rahul Gandhi, an Indian Opposition politician, has written to Twitter Inc.'s CEO, alleging that he is the target of an attempt to limit his ability to gain followers on the platform, casting new insight on the drastic drop in the growth of Twitter followers for many.  

Gandhi revealed in a letter to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal how his Twitter followers have decreased dramatically since August 2021.

Gandhi used the example of acquiring roughly 650,000 new followers in May 2021 to demonstrate how his Twitter account would attract an average of 8,000 to 10,000 new followers every day.

However, starting in August 2021, the number of new followers dropped to nearly zero.

Gandhi added that the reason for this, according to social media specialists, could be due to the topics he discussed on Twitter during these months. 

You can read the entire letter here: 

Gandhi also claimed that his Twitter account was temporarily suspended for no apparent reason.

In August of last year, Rahul Gandhi's Twitter account, along with the accounts of roughly 5,000 other Congress officials and employees, was momentarily blocked for tweeting photographs of the parents of a juvenile rape and murder victim in Delhi. 

According to ANI, a Twitter spokesperson claimed the follower counts are "meaningful" and "accurate."

"Twitter has zero-tolerance approach to platform manipulation and spam. We fight spam and malicious automation strategically and at scale with machine learning tools, and as part of those consistent and ongoing efforts to ensure a healthy service and credible accounts, follower counts can and do fluctuate," the spokesperson said.

(With inputs from agencies)