Why can’t Shashi Tharoor have 9 million followers on X? Congress MP reveals he wrote to Elon Musk, then…- The Week

Is something wrong with X in India? Congress Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor claims so.

Although he is not sure whether it is deliberate or accidental, Tharoor wonders if he is “shadow-banned” by the micro-blogging platform as his follower count never truly reaches the numbers it is expected to. The Thiruvananthapuram MP, who has over 8.4 million followers on the platform, said it seems impossible for him to have more than 8.495 million followers ever.

Fresh controversy: What did Shashi Tharoor say?

The former union minister opened up about his criticism after a user pointed out Shashi Tharoor’s number of followers on X (formerly Twitter) is well below the expected lines despite his immense popularity. Retweeting the post, the Congress leader claimed, a lot of people have asked him the question, which remains an unresolved mystery. Even writing a letter to X boss Elon Musk didn’t help, Tharoor shared. The MP said he “received a lawyer’s letter in return —  flatly denying there was a problem! So much for corporate responsiveness…”

Shashi Tharoor said he finally decided to address the issue in detail in the hope of getting a much-delayed response from X. “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.

Full transcript of Shashi Tharoor’s X post

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.

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), After three years plus of noticing this and no change under @X,  I wrote to @elonmusk to inquire about this and received a lawyer’s letter in return —  flatly denying there was a problem! So much for corporate responsiveness….

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.

Given all the more important issues in our public life, it seems too petty to mention. 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!