Twitter clamps down on suspicious accounts

New York Times: Many celebrities, politicians and so-called social media influencers found their Twitter followings knocked down a few digits on Thursday as the company slashed tens of millions of suspicious accounts from users’ followers.

For example, the actor Ashton Kutcher, an active member since the company’s early days who led many other celebrities to embrace the platform, lost more than a million of his followers. On Wednesday afternoon, he had 19.1 million. By Thursday evening, that was down to 18 million, a drop of nearly 6 percent.

Oprah Winfrey, who sent her inaugural tweet in 2009, had her following cut by about 1.4 million between Wednesday and Thursday evening. Ellen DeGeneres lost two million, leaving her at 76.1 million followers.

The basketball star Shaquille O’Neal also lost about a million, dropping from 15.3 million followers. Rihanna lost more than two million — but she still has 86.8 million people watching her tweets. Katy Perry saw her count drop by three million to 107 million. Kim Kardashian West also lost a couple of million. She was at 58.5 million late Thursday as the purge continued.

Read more on the New York Times here.