Social Shakeup: Left-Wing Twitter Accounts Lose Followers, Conservatives Gain After Musk Buyout

3.9k Share this

Left-wing Twitter accounts have been losing followers while conservative accounts gain followers in the wake of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s successful bid to buy the social media company.

Leftists who deem language they disagree with “hate speech” and “disinformation” appear to be leaving Twitter in droves in the wake of Elon Musk’s as evidenced by progressive accounts losing large numbers of followers.

The hashtag #LeaveTwitter began to trend on the platform after the news of Musk’s $44 billion buyout broke, with some appearing to follow through on that promise.

Elon Musk grins (TOBIAS SCHWARZ /Getty)

US President Barack Obama speaks on the Keystone XL pipeline, watched by Vice President Joe Biden, on November 6, 2015 in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC. President Obama on Friday blocked the construction of a controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline between Canada and the United States, ending years of bitter and politically charged debate. AFP PHOTO/MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Barack Obama (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Former President Barack Obama — the most popular account on the platform with more than 131 million followers — for example, lost 300,000 followers nearly overnight, according to a report by NBC.

Meanwhile, singer Katy Perry — the third most popular account on Twitter with 108 million followers — has lost 200,000 followers on Twitter.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), by contrast, gained nearly 100,000 to her official congressional account in just 24 hours.

Twitter permanently banned Greene’s personal account earlier this year, claiming the congresswoman had engaged in “repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” but did not specify which tweet had triggered the ban.

On Tuesday, Twitter told AFP that the fluctuations in follower counts appear to be organic, and largely due to new accounts being created and existing ones deactivated. Conservatives on the platform also credit the return of accounts that were previously banned by Twitter’s censor-happy left-wing employees.

Musk’s purchase of Twitter comes after he has expressed concerns over the stifling of free speech being harmful to society, and stating that he wants to increase trust in Twitter, which he sees as a digital town square for people to engage in free speech and debate.

On Monday, Musk tweeted the following statement:

“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,” said Mr. Musk. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”