Twitter Follower Fluctuations: What’s Causing It?

An NBC News report on the reaction to Elon Musk’s move to purchase Twitter appears to have massively overestimated fluctuations in certain follower counts on the social-media site, while presenting a tenuous theory to explain actual changes in the relative followings of prominent liberal and conservative users.

According to the report, which was published on Tuesday evening, former president Barack Obama had lost 300,000 followers since Monday, while singer Katy Perry lost more than 200,000. In a Twitter thread promoting the piece, author Ben Collins, who covers disinformation, extremism, and the Internet for NBC, also claimed that Taylor Swift saw a drop-off of somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 followers.

About the Author

Isaac Schorr

Isaac Schorr is an editor at Mediaite and a 2023–2024 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow at the Fund for American Studies.

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An NBC News report on the reaction to Elon Musk’s move to purchase Twitter appears to have massively overestimated fluctuations in certain follower counts on the social-media site, while presenting a tenuous theory to explain actual changes in the relative followings of prominent liberal and conservative users.

According to the report, which was published on Tuesday evening, former president Barack Obama had lost 300,000 followers since Monday, while singer Katy Perry lost more than 200,000. In a Twitter thread promoting the piece, author Ben Collins, who covers disinformation, extremism, and the Internet for NBC, also claimed that Taylor Swift saw a drop-off of somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 followers.