Twitter aims to improve user experience by removing locked accounts from follower counts

A day after WhatsApp, a messaging application, rolled out a new feature that indicates which message has been "forwarded", Twitter, an online news and social networking service, in a measure to enhance user experience will remove locked accounts — those that are disabled because of suspicious activity — from follower-count tallies.

The move the company said could result in some users seeing a big drop in their base of followers.

This essentially means that Twitter in its effort to improve the health of the conversations, routinely keeps a tab on the accounts to validate if the accounts are owned and operated by the person who first opened them.


To establish this, until confirmation is complete, these accounts are locked and, after a period of time, removed from follower counts.

This step is taken to present a more accurate and informative number of followers across all Twitter accounts.

Twitter does not include these accounts in the publicly reported metrics of active users.

To prevent the proliferation of fake news and and ensure utmost security for its users, Twitter has taken these steps. The step can be viewed in the backdrop of endless rumours on WhatsApp that have fuelled a spate of incidents involving mob fury and growing instances of lynching throughout the nation.

Twitter in an official release explained what this move aims to do and how it will affect the users.

What this means for the users
With this change, some accounts will see a visible drop in their follower count. However, this decrease is exclusively made up of locked accounts that have not been confirmed and have been set as inactive after a considerable amount of time. Nobody will lose any active, engaged followers, stated Twitter.

Removing locked accounts
Sometimes we lock accounts, which means they cannot engage with others or post new Tweets until they confirm and change their password. Accounts that haven’t done so will be removed from follower counts, said Twitter.

More meaningful follower counts
By removing such accounts, you’ll have a more accurate follower count.

Providing an even playing field
Before this change, some accounts may have misleading follower counts because of the number of locked accounts following them.

(With Inputs from Twitter Release)