'Under government pressure,' Rahul Gandhi claims, Twitter is reducing his followers

Rahul Gandhi, a Congress member, claims that the microblogging platform Twitter is restricting his followers under "government pressure" to silence his voice.

In a letter to Twitter CEO Parag Aggarwal in December of last year, the Congress MP reportedly claimed that Twitter was restricting his followers on the social media network due to direct pressure from the government.

It should be mentioned that one of Rahul Gandhi's tweets was recently removed by Twitter for allegedly breaking the company's content guidelines.

"I want to bring your attention to what I believe is Twitter's unwitting complicity in curbing free and fair speech in India," Rahul Gandhi wrote in his letter to Twitter's CEO.

Following an eight-day suspension in August last year, the Gandhi scion also supplied an analysis of data from his Twitter account, which showed that the number of followers, which now stands at 19.5 million, has barely climbed for several months.

However, responding to Rahul Gandhi's letter, Twitter said, "Follower counts are a visible feature and we want everyone to have confidence that numbers are meaningful and accurate." The social media company said, "Twitter has a zero-tolerance approach to platform manipulation and spam."

The social media company added, "We remove millions of accounts each week for violating our policies on platform manipulation & 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 no could be higher."

The Twitter spokesperson further said, "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."

Gandhi, a Congress Member of Parliament from Kerala's Wayanad, has been an outspoken opponent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government at the Centre and its many policies and choices since 2015.

The news comes just weeks before assembly elections in five states begin on February 10. The Election Commission has curtailed on-ground campaigning as a result of the third wave of the Covid-19 outbreak, and parties are increasingly attempting to win voters online.