New Delhi:

Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor once wrote to ‘X’ boss Elon Musk about his dropping follower count on the microblogging site, but received a lawyer’s response flatly denying that there was a problem.

The Thiruvananthapuram MP and renowned author, known for his engaging social media posts, wrote that many X users have noticed his stagnant follower count and flagged it to him. This, Mr Tharoor said, had prompted him to go public about the issue.

The Congress leader was responding to one such post that questioned why Mr Tharoor’s follower count was stuck at 8.4 million despite his popularity among people from different fields.

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… https://t.co/IpfTJpMvwt

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) November 17, 2024

“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,” Mr Tharoor wrote in a post.

“He thought it was an algorithm glitch. 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”. (My source has since left @X),” the Congress leader added.

Mr Tharoor wrote that after noticing this problem for three years, he wrote to Elon Musk. “…received a lawyer’s letter in return – flatly denying there was a problem! So much for corporate responsiveness…,” he said.

“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. There is clearly something wrong that the people in charge of @XCorpIndia don’t care about. But more and more people have been noticing and asking me, so I have finally decided to go public about it,” Mr Tharoor said.

He said stagnant follower count seems “too petty” an issue to mention considering the more important issues in public life. “But whether it is deliberate or accidental, I hope those asking understand that there is a problem. Perhaps laying it out here might get the attention of someone responsible at @XCorpIndia – but I am not holding my breath,” he said.