This story originally appeared on PCMag
Twitter’s attempts to fight abuse faced some backlash on Wednesday when conservative pundits complained their Twitter followers had been “purged” in a company crackdown of rule-breaking accounts.
Twitter’s general counsel Vijaya Gadde confirmed the crackdown, but said it had nothing to do with politics.
“Yesterday we took action against a number of accounts that we believe have violated our policies by creating new accounts after being suspended,” she said in a tweet. “This is a part of the work we’re doing every day to improve Twitter.”
We enforce our rules without political bias. We are committed to continuing these efforts to make Twitter better and everyone should expect continued visible impact of our work.
— Vijaya Gadde (@vijaya) February 21, 2018
The company hasn’t said how many accounts were taken down, but several conservative pundits including Fox News commentator Dan Bongino reported losing thousands of followers the night before. “The twitter purge is real,” he said.
On Wednesday, critics of the crackdown were tweeting the hastag #TwitterLockOut, and raising questions over whether the platform was censoring conservative voices.
I see twitter did some pruning overnight erasing followers. they snatched a bunch from me but I’m reading a lot if folks got hit much harder. who knows what their criteria is but hope it’s not…
