Twitter Suspends Over 100,000 Accounts Recreated After Initial Suspension

Twitter has announced the suspension of over 100,000 accounts that were recreated after last year’s purge that saw several personalities locked out of the mini-blogging platform.

Among the accounts suspended include the handle @guru001, that was suspected to have belonged to renowned blogger Cyprian Nyakundi.

“Previously, we only reviewed potentially abusive Tweets if they were reported to us. We know that’s not acceptable, so earlier this year we made it a priority to take a proactive approach to abuse in addition to relying on people’s reports,” said Twitter.

In last year’s purge, several people lost a good number of followers while others had their accounts swept for violation Twitter rules and regulations.

Nyakundi who had a little over 1 million followers had his followers reduced to 696,000 followers, before his account was finally suspended for posting nudes. NRG radio presenter Dela was left with 521,000 followers while the moral policeman Ezekiel was left with a meager 34,000 followers up from 106,000.

“This week (last year July), we’ll be removing these locked accounts from follower counts across profiles globally. As a result, the number of followers displayed on many profiles may go down,” Twitter said in a blog post.

Read: Twitter Purge Hits Blogger Nyakundi, Ezekiel Mutua And Xtian Dela Hard As They Lose Followers

Locked accounts are different from bots, with the latter exhibiting spammy behavior from the beginning.

The locked accounts on the other hand were created by real people but Twitter cannot confirm that the original person who opened the account still has control and access to it.

Also making it on the list of losers was TV Reality star, Kim Kardashian West who lost at least 2 million follower accounts leaving her with 58.5 million followers.

US President Donald Trump was no exception as he lost at least 300,000 followers. President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto lost 15,411 and 6949 respectively.

Also hit by the purge is BBC reporter Larry Madowo who lost 7,835 followers with his counterpart from Citizen TV Jeff Koinange losing a little over 11,000 followers.

Human Rights activist Boniface Mwangi was also on the losing side having lost 3,331 follower accounts, political analyst Mutahi Ngunyi lost 6,995 and ODM party leader Raila Odinga lost 10,698 followers.

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