Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has written to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal alleging that the microblogging platform is limiting his following due to pressure from the Narendra Modi government.
According to NDTV, Rahul Gandhi wrote a letter to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on December 27, alleging that the platform was probably working under pressure from the Modi government.
As per the report, the Congress leader said that previously he was gaining about two lakh followers per month, but since August 2021, his follower count has been increasing at a rate of a mere 2500 per month.
The letter included an analysis of data from Rahul Gandhi's Twitter account as well as comparisons with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor.
In the letter, Rahul Gandhi said that while he added an average of about 4 lakh followers for the first seven months of 2021, the growth came to an abrupt halt for several months following an eight-day suspension in August last year.
"I am writing to you on behalf of more than a billion Indians to not allow Twitter to become a pawn in the destruction of the idea of India," he said in the letter, reported NDTV.
However, refuting the allegation of Congress MP, Twitter's spokesperson said that the company has a zero-tolerance approach to manipulation and spam.
"Follower counts are a visible feature and we want everyone to have confidence that numbers are meaningful and accurate. Twitter has a zero-tolerance approach to platform manipulation and spam," Twitter's spokesperson told ANI.
"We fight spam and malicious automation strategically and at scale with machine learning tools, and as part of those consistent and ongoing efforts to ensure a healthy service and credible accounts, follower counts can and do fluctuate," Twitter added.
Their statement further read: "We remove millions of accounts each week for violating our policies on platform manipulation and spam. You can take a look at the latest Twitter Transparency Center update for more context. While some accounts notice a minor difference, in certain cases number could be higher."
In August last year, Rahul Gandhi's Twitter account was briefly suspended after he tweeted a photograph of the family of a rape victim in Delhi.
