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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 30 2018, @10:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-I-like-all-the-bots-that-listen-to-me! dept.

Trump complains about Twitter removing his followers

US President Donald Trump complained Friday that Twitter is removing some of his followers and has made it harder to join, an apparent critique of the social network's efforts to weed out fake and abusive accounts.

Trump, who has some 55 million Twitter followers, revived his argument about "bias" by internet firms in a morning tweet[*] that suggested growth in his network was slowing.

[...] Trump's remarks appeared aimed at Twitter's efforts to weed out fake and "spam" accounts to improve the health and safety of the platform.

For months, Twitter has sought to eliminate automated and bogus accounts designed to manipulate the public conversation on Twitter, in response to concerns over Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Twitter said this week the number of active users fell by nine million in the past quarter as a result of these efforts.

Asked about the president's comments, a Twitter spokesman said: "Our focus is on the health of the service, and that includes work to remove fake accounts to prevent malicious behavior.

"Many prominent accounts have seen follower counts drop, but the result is higher confidence that the followers they have are real, engaged people."

[*] Tweet source:

Donald J. Trump on Twitter

Donald J. Trump on Twitter: "Twitter has removed many people from my account and, more importantly, they have seemingly done something that makes it much harder to join - they have stifled growth to a point where it is obvious to all. A few weeks ago it was a Rocket Ship, now it is a Blimp! Total Bias?"


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @04:18PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @04:18PM (#755697)

    To anyone dumb enough to keep saying that Twitter is a "private company":

    Prince Alwaleed Meets Twitter Management in New York [mideast-times.com]

    HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, Chairman of Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), met with Mr. Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, Mr. Ali Rowghani, CFO of Twitter and Mr. Suhail Rizvi from Twitter at The Plaza Hotel in New York on Monday 6th February 2012 during His Royal Highness’s trip to the U.S. Prince Alwaleed was accompanied by a delegation that Mr. Jamal Khashoggi, General Manager of Alarab news channel that is privately owned by Prince Alwaleed and Ms. Heba Fatani, Senior Executive Manager, Corporate Communications Department, KHC.

    When you are owned by a Saudi prince who was tortured by Blackwater for funding the 20th hijacker and a guy who was chopped up with a bonesaw for supporting the old regime's attempts to overthrow the new regime, you are not a "private company" but a branch of a government.

    We also had a story here about Twitter's censorship technology in 2015. [soylentnews.org] They have been working to develop new censorship techniques and hide them from users for three years.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @11:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @11:43PM (#755853)

    Yeah, welcome to fascism. The government hides behind the "private" companies and thus the great loophole is born! Now, OFF WITH SOME HEADS!/s

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @12:00AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @12:00AM (#755857)

    Meh. That prince isn't in power anymore, and he may even be in custody (or dead). So his little visit six years ago is meaningless.