News/Commentary

Burning evidence before new boss comes? Sudden algorithm change could explain why Conservatives just got Twitter followers back as left lost a ton

April 27, 2022 | | Print Article

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Something strange appears to be occurring on Twitter, where suddenly conservatives have been gaining and liberals have been losing tens of thousands of followers.

The list of affected persons is large and includes everybody from Donald Trump Jr. to former President Barack Hussein Obama.

Trump Jr. for his part believes that billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter may have something to do with this strange phenomenon.

“While I’m awesome and totally deserving of 87,000 new followers a day it seems that someone took the shackles off my account. Wonder if they’re burning the evidence before new mgmt comes in?” he tweeted Tuesday.

Attached to the tweet was a screenshot of his account stats from Social Blade, a data tracker that lets users closely monitor the performance — such as followers gained, followers lost — of their social media accounts.

Look:

His stats showed that he’d suddenly gained 87,000 followers between Monday, which was the day that Twitter’s current board had agreed to sell the social media platform to Musk for $44 billion, and Tuesday.

A look at his Social Blade stats as of Wednesday morning showed that he’d gained another 119,000 between Tuesday and Wednesday:

(Source: Social Blade)

Data from social blade shows that Fox News host Tucker Carlson, radio show host Joe Rogan, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and plenty of other non-liberal voices have also gained followers.

Look:

The opposite trend has been observed among members of the left, with everybody from Obama to failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, CNN host Anderson Cooper, Vice President Kamala Harris and far-left New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hemorrhaging tens of thousands of followers.

Look:

Among those also affected include Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (gained), Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar (lost) and former Democrat congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (gained).

What remains unclear is the reason for this phenomenon.

Twitter, for its part, claimed in a statement to NBC News that these fluctuations are the result of organic behavior, i.e., users voluntarily joining or leaving Twitter.

“We’ve been looking into recent fluctuations in follower counters. While we continue to take action on accounts that violate our spam policy which can affect follower counts, these fluctuations appear to largely be a result of an increase in new account creation and deactivation. We’ll continue looking into these follower count fluctuations and keep you updated,” the social media network said.

In other words, according to NBC News’ Ben Collins, “It wasn’t bots. Apolitical users fled. Right-wing users joined.”

Except the “right-wing users” have sometimes just been non-establishment voices like Joe Rogan and Tulsi Gabbard.

But not everybody believes this narrative from Twitter.

Case in point (*Language warning):

In fairness to Pool, Twitter does have a history of lying. For instance, on Tuesday a Twitter engineer claimed that the social media platform’s censoring of information about Hunter Biden’s laptop had been on the up and up.

But that was clearly a lie.

Vivek Saxena
Latest posts by Vivek Saxena (see all)

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