Elon Musk has yet to make any changes to the platform he bought just a few days ago for $44 billion. However, those users who trust the tycoon’s promises have already begun to make moves. Twitter profiles of conservative figures are getting a lot of new followers since the billionaire acquired the company on April 26. For their part, the accounts of celebrities or progressive representatives have experienced a loss of users, according to Blade data collected by TheVerge.
The aforementioned medium assures that the most influential conservative accounts on Twitter have received, on average, about 17,229 new followers since April 26, about ten times more than the daily average during the month prior to the acquisition. The most popular liberal profiles, on the other hand, they lost an average of 6,062 followers since Twitter announced the purchase by Elon Musk.
Of the right-wing accounts analyzed by TheVerge, the one that has experienced the greatest growth in followers since the purchase of Twitter is that of Republican Ron DeSantis. The current governor of Florida received 141,556 new users. On the other hand, 22,453 users have unfollowed Kamala Harris’s account, Vice President of the United States. It is the liberal profile that has lost the most users since April 26.
The increase in followers on conservative profiles is “organic”, says Twitter
The data of influential accounts that usually share conservative speeches, such as that of Donald Trump Jr.., also reflect that growth in new followers. The businessman, son of former President Donald Trump, has recently published a tweet in which he shows a screenshot with the number of users who began following him after the Twitter board of directors accepted Elon Musk’s offer.
In the publication, Donald Trump Jr. also shared some words that refer to the “liberation” of Twitter by Elon Musk. “While I am amazing and deserve 87,000 new followers per day, it seems that someone has removed the shackles from my account. I wonder if they are burning the evidence before the new administrator comes in,” the businessman mentioned.
Elon Musk, let’s remember, has been promising for weeks to make Twitter a place where any user can express their opinion freely. The growth of followers in those conservative profiles and the activation of right-wing user accounts, however, does not seem to be related to any change in the limitations of the algorithm. As confirmed by the company NBCnewsthe “follower count fluctuations” and the activation and deactivation (in the case of progressive profiles) of new accounts after the tycoon’s announcement, is something “organic”.
“While we continue to take action on accounts that violate our spam policy, which may affect follower counts, these fluctuations appear to be largely the result of an increase in new account creation and deactivation,” Twitter said. in the statements sent to the aforementioned medium.