Why your X follower count dropped: bot purges explained

A sudden drop usually means X took accounts out of your count, not that people walked away. X removes locked accounts from follower counts everywhere, suspends spam accounts in waves (the latest public one: 42,000 chatbot-reply accounts on 24 July 2026), and accounts that deactivate eventually disappear.⁠^[1]⁠^[2] A slow, steady decline over weeks is more likely real unfollows. Match the timing of your drop against the dated purges below, then look at which followers went missing.

Four ways a follower count goes down

1. A follower's account gets locked. X's help centre says that when an account is locked, X removes it from follower counts across the platform, so your number can fall even though nobody unfollowed you.⁠^[1] When Twitter introduced this in July 2018, it said accounts get locked after sudden changes in behaviour, such as a flood of unsolicited replies or mentions, misleading links, or a lot of people blocking the account, and also when leaked passwords put an account at risk.⁠^[3]

2. A follower's account gets suspended. X says most of the accounts it suspends are spam, and that real people are sometimes suspended by mistake and can appeal.⁠^[4] Suspensions often come in waves, which is what most people mean by a "bot purge".

3. A follower deactivates. Deactivation lasts 30 days. If the person doesn't log back in within that window, X deletes the account.⁠^[5] A deleted account can't keep following you.

4. Someone unfollows or is removed. People unfollow after a post they didn't like, or when they lose interest. You may also have blocked or removed followers yourself. And some accounts follow you only to get a follow back, then unfollow when it doesn't come. X's rules ban that "follow churn" and allow at most 400 new follows a day, but it still happens.⁠^[6]

The first three are X cleaning up. The fourth is people deciding. They feel the same on your profile, which is why the timing matters.

How to tell which one hit you

Your Notifications timeline lists new followers.⁠^[7] Scroll back to the follows you got before the drop and tap through. Profiles that now show "Account suspended", or that no longer load, are the ones X took out. Profiles that still load but no longer follow you are unfollows.

Notable purges, oldest first

These are the events X or its leadership announced publicly. Many smaller removals happen with no announcement at all; in 2018 Twitter said follower counts may keep changing regularly as it challenges problem accounts.⁠^[3]

• 11 July 2018: locked accounts leave follower counts. Twitter started removing locked accounts from follower counts globally. It said most people would see a change of four followers or fewer, and that accounts with large followings would see bigger drops.⁠^[3]
• 1 December 2022: spam and scam accounts. Elon Musk posted that Twitter was purging a lot of spam and scam accounts and warned that follower counts might drop.⁠^[8]
• 8 May 2023: long-inactive accounts. Musk posted that Twitter was purging accounts with no activity for several years, so follower counts would probably drop.⁠^[9] Engadget reported the next day that Twitter had also quietly tightened its inactivity policy to require a login every 30 days.⁠^[10]
• 12 October 2025: reply spam. Nikita Bier, then X's head of product, wrote that X had purged 1.7 million bots engaged in reply spam that week.⁠^[11] This is the figure often quoted in 2026 coverage; it describes one week in October 2025.

Latest purges

Updated 4 October 2026. Each entry gives the date of X's own public statement, newest first.

• 24 July 2026: 42,000 chatbot-reply accounts. Bier said X had found 42,000 accounts automating replies with chatbots and removed them.⁠^[2] What those accounts were doing, and how to spot the ones still around, is in AI reply bots on X.
• 9 April 2026: 208 suspensions a minute. Bier posted a send-off for "the reply bots" and warned the week would hurt,⁠^[12] then said X was identifying and suspending 208 bots per minute and rising.⁠^[13] The same day, PiunikaWeb reported creators losing thousands of followers, one of them about 20,000.⁠^[14]
• 13 March 2026: a spam push announced. Bier said nearly half of X's product team was building spam-mitigation features, all due to launch over the following three weeks.⁠^[15] The April wave followed.

When the next wave is announced, it goes at the top of this list with its date and source.

What to do after a drop

Don't refill the number. Buying followers to replace what you lost puts you on the wrong side of X's rules, which prohibit using or promoting services that claim to add followers.⁠^[6] Bought followers are also the kind of accounts X's spam enforcement targets, so a later sweep can take them back out. What bought X followers look like explains why that's easy to spot.

Don't deactivate and reactivate to "fix" it. X says deactivating and reactivating won't fix wrong follower or following counts.⁠^[5]

If your own account was locked or suspended, follow the prompts when you log in (such as confirming a phone number or email), and appeal if you think X made a mistake.⁠^[4]

Look at who's left, not just how many. A purge removes accounts that X caught; it doesn't tell you what your remaining newest followers post. How to tell if your X followers are bots is the step-by-step for judging them by hand. A TrustAudience check reads up to 10 recent posts from each of up to 100 of your newest followers (method). When our data provider still returns a follower marked suspended or deactivated, the report counts it as Unavailable (weighted 25 in the Audience score). Followers X has already dropped from your list won't appear at all, and the report can't show who unfollowed. It's a snapshot of your newest followers, and the score does not verify audience quality.

If a sponsor asks, give them the date of your drop and the matching purge from the list above. A drop on the day of a public suspension wave is easier to explain than an unexplained slide.

Check it by hand

1. Start a log today. Write down your follower count at the same time each day. Two weeks of numbers separate a one-day cliff from a slow slope.
2. When the count jumps down, note the date and size, then search X for posts from X staff about spam or suspensions that day.
3. Open your Notifications timeline and go back through recent new followers. Tap 20 of them. Count how many show "Account suspended", how many no longer load, and how many are still there but not following you.
4. Compare. Mostly suspended or missing means a purge. Mostly still active but gone from your followers means unfollows.
5. Write it down next to the log, so the next drop is quicker to read.