The future of Twitter under Elon Musk remains uncertain after the billionaire’s offer to purchase the company for $44 billion was accepted earlier this week. Twitter said it has seen numerous cases of fluctuations in follower counts on the platform after the deal was announced.
“We’ve been looking into recent fluctuations in follower counts,” Twitter said in a statement. “While we continue to take action on accounts that violate our spam policy which can affect follower counts, these fluctuations appear to largely have been a result of an increase in new account creation and deactivation. We’ll continue looking into these follower count fluctuations.”
Twitter users noticed Tuesday the surprising spike and notable decrease of followers for high-profile accounts. Many conservative users attributed the rapidly changing follower counts to Musk’s purchase of the platform.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whose personal Twitter account was banned from the platform, gained nearly 100,000 followers on her official government account. Former U.S. President Barack Obama, however, lost more than 300,000 followers.
The deactivations came as some users expressed fear that Musk’s approach to free speech will lead to changes in content moderation policies.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk tweeted shortly after Twitter accepted Musk’s offer.