Trump complains Twitter purged his followers, cites ‘bias’

(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

President Trump griped on Friday that Twitter has recently purged followers from his account, suggesting that it was because of “bias” at the Silicon Valley company.

The complaint comes a day after Twitter revealed that it had lost 9 million monthly active users in the most recent quarter as it cracked down on suspicious accounts it said were tied to “fake news” campaigns and hateful speech.

“Twitter has removed many people from my account and, more importantly, they have seemingly done something that makes it much harder to join – they have stifled growth to a point where it is obvious to all,” the president tweeted early Friday.

“A few weeks ago it was a Rocket Ship, now it is a Blimp! Total Bias?”

Last week, Twitter disclosed it removed some 10 million tweets it thought were the work of Russian and Iranian government-backed influence operations.

“Our focus is on the health of the service, and that includes work to remove fake accounts and those engaging in malicious behavior,” a Twitter spokesperson said in response to the president’s Friday tweet.

“Many prominent accounts have seen follower counts drop, but the result is higher confidence that the followers they have are real, engaged people,” the spokesperson added.

Trump’s Friday tweet came right around the time that Fox Business was running a segment on Twitter’s earnings results, in which it disclosed the recent bot purge.

In an interview last month, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that while there are “a lot” of conservative Twitter employees, they are not comfortable being vocal around the office.

“They don’t feel safe to express their opinions at the company,” Dorsey said. “They do feel silenced by just the general swirl of what they perceive to be the broader percentage of leanings within the company, and I don’t think that’s fair or right.”

Shares of Twitter were up 1.3 percent on Friday afternoon, at $32.20.

This story originally appeared in the New York Post.