Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi has written to Twitter questioning its policy on suppressing his reach to his followers and not curbing hate speeches in the country.
The letter written on December 27 says, "It is perplexing that growth in my Twitter follower has suddenly been suppressed, with nearly 20 million followers on my Twitter account very active adding 8 to 10 thousand followers daily."
He said in May his account gained 6,40,000 followers but since August it has fallen to zero.
"I have been albeit discreetly informed by people of Twitter India that they are under immense pressure by the government to silence my voice," he wrote.
Rahul said to twitter, "you have enormous responsibility that twitter does not actively help in the growth of authoritarianism in India as the world is watching."
He also mentioned how his account was blocked but Twitter at that time had said that following the complaint by the NCPCR, Gandhi's Twitter account was temporarily suspended and the party, from his official handle, tweeted that due process was being followed for its restoration.
Rahul Gandhi, who joined Twitter in April 2015 and has 19.6 million followers on the social media platform, is expected to stay connected via other social media platforms.
Later, responding to the allegations of the Congress leader, Twitter spokesperson said the follower counts are a visible feature and they want everyone to have confidence that the numbers are meaningful and accurate, and there is a zero-tolerance approach to platform manipulation and spam.
"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. We remove millions of accounts each week for violating our policies on platform manipulation and 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 the number could be higher," ANI reported citing the Twitter spokesperson.
(With Inputs From IANS)