E-Paper
‘I once wondered if X has shadow banned me, wrote to Elon Musk’: Shashi Tharoor
The Congress MP has more than 8.4 million (84 lakh) followers on the microblogging platform.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has revealed he once thought his account on X (earlier Twitter) was under a “shadow ban,” prompting him to approach billionaire Elon Musk, who owns the platform, only to be informed there was no problem.
Tharoor made the revelation in response to a user who was puzzled about the politician's follower count not moving beyond 8.4 million (84 lakh) despite the former being “tremendously liked by people.”
The Thiruvananthapuram MP posted: “Good question. This has been the case for four years! A source at the old Twitter India told me there was a problem he couldn't understand: he had reviewed my daily statistics over six months, and found a strange pattern — my followers went up by over 1000 a day, about 60 - 70 “unfollowed” me each day, but my overall followers total wouldn’t budge above 8.495 million.”
The source thought the issue was an “algorithm glitch” and has since left X, he said.
The Congress leader explained why he suspected his handle was “shadow banned” and why he approached Musk.
“Since my account is never “suggested” for anyone to follow, and many of my followers complain about not receiving most of my posts on their timeline, I wondered if i had been “shadow-banned”,” the politician-author wrote.
The ex-UN official added: “I wrote to @elonmusk to inquire about this and received a lawyer’s letter in return — flatly denying there was a problem! The only practical consequence of my inquiry is that my followers count now drops unsteadily each day — from the peak of 8.495m to 8.429m today.”
On why he went public with the issue, Tharoor stated there was “clearly something wrong” those helming X in India “don't care about”, and people began noticing his stagnant follower count and asking him about it.
