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Dubai: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account has suddenly lost more than 270,000 followers. This has nothing to do with his popularity.

The drop came after Twitter announced a global crackdown on fake and automated accounts two days ago.

Tweep @Anmolmishra610 posted: Prime Minister @NarendraModi’s handle, which is the most-followed Twitter account in India, lost more than 2 lakh followers within a span of 24 hours.”

On 11 July, PM Modi’s Twitter account @narendramodi had 43.3 million followers on Friday this fell to 43.1 million. According to a recent global study, Modi’s personal Twitter account, is the third most followed Twitter handle of a world leader, globally.

However, in India Modi is constantly criticised for encouraging trolls on Twitter, by following them.

Tweep @arunmsk highlighted: “Congress President @RahulGandhi’s twitter followers stays intact after Twitter purge. Modi loses tons of followers after #TwitterPurge. This is the problem of having fake followers. #TwitterCleanUp”

According to a report by news agency Indo-Asian News Service: "Congress president Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) has lost 17,503 followers."

On Friday, #TwitterCleanUp and #TwitterPurge became popular hashtags worldwide.

On July 11 @Twitter had posted: “We are committed to building trust and encouraging healthy conversation on Twitter. Follower counts should be meaningful and accurate. We are removing locked accounts from follower counts.”

Twitter, in a blog post confirmed that it was starting to remove some Twitter handles which were locked earlier for suspicious behaviour.

The micro-blogging site has been under increased public scrutiny over complaints of fake and automated Twitter profiles that are spreading fake news and spamming, or being used to abuse or impersonate others.

Modi was not the only person to see this massive dip in the number of followers. Former US President Barack Obama lost a massive 2.4 million followers while his successor Donald Trump saw a dip of 326,118 followers.

In a blog post, Twitter’s Legal, Policy, Trust and Safety Lead, Vijaya Gadde wrote: “We understand this may be hard for some, but we believe accuracy and transparency make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation.”

Pop music artist Katy Perry, whose account is the most followed, lost more than 2.8 million followers. Other prominent celebrities also saw a drop in their number of followers.

Twitter users who did not lose many followers were grateful.
@bobmbori posted: “#TwitterCleanUp my followers have remained firm at 1,000+. Thank you for being #real.”

And @malekawt tweeted: “I seemingly didn’t lose much followers (less than 100), so thank you for being legit peeps!”

Some also tweeted memes about influencers losing followers.

@w_talu posted: “When you bought your followers and they disappear overnight! #TwitterCleanUp #TwitterPurge”

But guess who lost the biggest share of followers? The purge caused Twitter’s own primary account (@Twitter) to lose 7.5 million fake accounts.