Sunday, 22 December 2024
Sunday, 22 December 2024
Former diplomat turned Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who is popular on social media with over 8.4 million followers on X, has voiced his frustration on Sunday over his continuous follower count slide for four years.
In a post on X, Tharoor detailed his attempts to investigate the issue, including reaching out to Elon Musk.
The response? A lawyer’s letter from Musk’s team, denying any problem, according to Tharoor.
Tharoor revealed that a former Twitter India insider had flagged a “strange pattern” in his stats—daily gains of over 1,000 followers offset by 60–70 unfollows, yet his overall count remained static.
This led Tharoor to suspect he might be “shadow-banned,” a term denoting reduced visibility of a user’s posts.
But with no formal acknowledgment from X, his suspicions remain unconfirmed.
In December 2022, Musk had admitted that shadow banning was real and announced plans for transparency, including revealing “true account status.” He promised in a post that “Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal.”
Elon Musk took over Twitter on October 2022 and renamed it X.
Yet, Tharoor said his follower count has since dipped from a peak of 8.495 million to 8.429 million, with no explanation from X.
“There is clearly something wrong that the people in charge of X India don’t care about,” he wrote, adding that his posts rarely appear in suggestions or timelines.
Frustrated with the lack of corporate accountability, Tharoor declared, “So much for corporate responsiveness.”
Tharoor’s public airing of grievances showed mixed reactions on X.
One user accused him of playing the “victim card” or, worse, indulging in petty self-promotion.
Another user wrote, “Sir, now you too trying the Victim Card here... Hope you won’t allege this is something like EVM Hack, where @elonmusk did this X downfall to you.”
Another took a more personal jab, suggesting his stagnant followers might be less about shadow bans and more about relevance: “Methinks you have been sidelined by your own party... I no longer read your posts because you just criticize for the sake of criticizing.”
Tharoor acknowledged the relative triviality of his concerns amid India’s many pressing issues but maintained that whether accidental or deliberate, there’s a problem.
“Perhaps laying it out here might get the attention of someone responsible at @XCorpIndia — but I am not holding my breath,” he added.
Tharoor tagged Elon Musk in his post about his follower count issue. But his queries haven’t elicited any response from the X owner (yet).
