What do Marie Osmond and The Used have in common? Music, Utah ties and a drop Thursday of roughly 11,000 Twitter followers apiece.
The social media site announced Wednesday that it planned to purge millions of “locked” accounts, or user profiles that had been frozen due to inactivity or suspicious behavior.
By late Thursday afternoon, the effects of the purge were visible in the numbers of accounts following politicians, media outlets, celebrities, athletes and other notable figures in the state and across the country.
“Follower counts are a visible feature, and we want everyone to have confidence that the numbers are meaningful and accurate,” Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal counsel, wrote in a formal blog post on the site.