Rahul Gandhi Claims Drop-In Follower Count, Twitter Says Zero Tolerance For Manipulation

NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi wrote a letter to the CEO of Twitter Parag Agrawal stating that his followers on Twitter have dropped.

On Thursday 27 January, the Twitter Company replied in this regard saying that the numbers are accurate and meaningful. The spokesperson of the social media company stated about Twitter's zero-tolerance approach to platform spam and manipulation.

On speaking with media about the matter the spokesperson of the microblogging site said that the company strategically fights malicious automation and spam at scale with the machine learning tools. The spokesman also informed that the followers tally can and do changes as part of the continuous and ongoing attempts to ensure credible accounts and proper service to users.

The statement from Twitter comes after Rahul Gandhi wrote to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal with claims that Twitter has unwittingly and deliberately interfered in curbing free and fair speech in the country.

He claimed that there is no improvement or increase in the number of followers on Twitter since his profile was suspended temporarily in the month of August last year for his post that violates Twitter's rules. He had uploaded the photos of the Nangal gang rape and murder victim.

In his letter on 27 December, the Congress leader wrote that the social media company Twitter should not turn out to be a pawn in the destruction of the idea of India. He further wrote arguing that the platform has a great responsibility in ensuring that it doesn't actively help in the increase of authoritarianism in the country.

He mentioned about Twitter's enormous responsibility by asserting that the ideological quarrel between authoritarianism and liberal democracy prevailing across the globe is given various shapes in such social media platforms.

Gandhi wrote that the growth in his Twitter followers all of a sudden seems to be suppressed and mentions about his account's activeness as it had 8 to 10 thousand new followers on a regular basis.

The former Congress President at last claims that there is an infection point after which his Twitter profile seems to have been paralyzed.

In the letter, he writes that social media platforms are used by a huge number of people across the country and worldwide to express their thoughts and raise various issues by holding the government into account therefore such issues with the platform itself need to be met.

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