{"id":2964,"date":"2019-02-08T06:49:22","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T06:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/precog.iiitd.edu.in\/blog\/?p=2964"},"modified":"2019-03-18T07:24:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T07:24:17","slug":"twitters-suspect-users-affects-indian-political-handles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/?p=2964","title":{"rendered":"Twitter\u2019s \u201csuspect users\u201d affects Indian political handles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;\">Twitter removed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-twitter-followers\/twitter-cuts-suspect-users-from-follower-counts-again-blames-bug-idUSKCN1NE2K3\">\u201csuspected users\u201d<\/a> from their platform during the week of Nov 1, 2018. This is potentially about 2.4 Million handles. Given our interest in analyzing political accounts in India, we were keen on analyzing how much of this affected the Indian political scenario. We found a large number of handles losing followers. Lets look at some of the handles which lost large numbers of followers because of this removal of suspected users.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;\">The handle <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KirenRijiju\">@KirenRijiju<\/a> had 599K followers on Nov 7, 2018 and it had 475K followers on Nov 8, 2018. The handle lost about 124K followers in one day. Below is a graph showing this in more detail.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-3001 hoverZoomLink\" src=\"http:\/\/precog.iiitd.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/kirenrijiju-1-1024x368.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"345\" srcset=\"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/kirenrijiju-1-1024x368.png 1024w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/kirenrijiju-1-300x108.png 300w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/kirenrijiju-1-768x276.png 768w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/kirenrijiju-1-1140x410.png 1140w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/kirenrijiju-1.png 1330w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/byadavbjp\">@byadavbjp<\/a> had 309K followers on Nov 7, 2018 while it had 228K on Nov 8, 2018. This handle lost 81K followers because of twitter deleting suspected users. Below is the graph.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-3000 hoverZoomLink\" src=\"http:\/\/precog.iiitd.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/byadavbjp-1-1024x356.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"334\" srcset=\"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/byadavbjp-1-1024x356.png 1024w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/byadavbjp-1-300x104.png 300w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/byadavbjp-1-768x267.png 768w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/byadavbjp-1-1140x396.png 1140w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/byadavbjp-1.png 1352w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ianuragthakur\">@ianuragthakur<\/a> handle had 1.28Million followers on Nov 7, 2018 while it had 1.26 Million the following day. This handle lost 20K followers. Graph below.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-3002 hoverZoomLink\" src=\"http:\/\/precog.iiitd.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/ianuragthakur-1-1024x355.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/ianuragthakur-1-1024x355.png 1024w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/ianuragthakur-1-300x104.png 300w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/ianuragthakur-1-768x266.png 768w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/ianuragthakur-1-1140x395.png 1140w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/ianuragthakur-1.png 1386w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>We analyzed all these handles closely to see these differences in followers. Out of all the handles we are analyzing, about 40 of them have slightly larger drops in the followers. You see all the 40 handles together on the <a href=\"http:\/\/labs.precog.iiitd.edu.in\/elections-2019\/assets\/followers.html\">Dashboard URL.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>We continue adding different analyses on our <a href=\"http:\/\/labs.precog.iiitd.edu.in\/elections-2019\/\">Dashboard<\/a>. \u00a0Now you can search (see image below) for a handle in the portal to find their activity in terms of followers, followings, and tweets.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2992 hoverZoomLink\" src=\"http:\/\/precog.iiitd.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/search-elections-1024x144.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"135\" srcset=\"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/search-elections-1024x144.png 1024w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/search-elections-300x42.png 300w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/search-elections-768x108.png 768w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/search-elections.png 1036w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We also saw sharp increase in some political handles roughly during the period 30 Sept &#8211; 14 Oct. For <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/narendramodi\">@narendramodi<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RahulGandhi\">@RahulGandhi<\/a> we found steady increase of followers, while the decrease on Nov 7, 2018 was 100K followers and 10K followers respectively. Stay tuned for more analysis!<\/p>\n<p>We are collecting data for <a href=\"http:\/\/labs.precog.iiitd.edu.in\/elections-2019\/handles\"><em>925<\/em> handles<\/a>. Below is the histogram \/ distribution of number of tweets per handle. We see 41 handles having 0 tweets and 90 handles having less than 132 tweets on their timeline. See below for detailed distribution of tweets vs handles.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2985 hoverZoomLink\" src=\"http:\/\/precog.iiitd.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/tweet_frequency-1024x797.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"747\" srcset=\"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/tweet_frequency-1024x797.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/tweet_frequency-300x233.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/tweet_frequency-768x598.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/tweet_frequency-1140x887.jpeg 1140w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you have any questions for us to answer, please drop an email at pk[at]iiitd[dot]ac[dot]in we will be happy to answer it for you and credit the same for you.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Twitter removed \u201csuspected users\u201d from their platform during the week of Nov 1, 2018. This is potentially about 2.4 Million handles. Given our interest in analyzing political accounts in India, we were keen on analyzing how much of this affected the Indian political scenario. We found a large number of handles losing followers. Lets look at some of the handles which lost large numbers of followers because of this removal of suspected users. \u00a0 The handle @KirenRijiju had 599K followers on Nov 7, 2018 and it had 475K followers on Nov 8, 2018. The handle lost about 124K followers in one day. Below is a graph showing this in more detail. \u00a0 @byadavbjp had 309K followers on Nov 7, 2018 while it had 228K on Nov 8, 2018. This handle lost 81K followers because of twitter deleting suspected users. Below is the graph. \u00a0 @ianuragthakur handle had 1.28Million followers on Nov 7, 2018 while it had 1.26 Million the following day. This handle lost 20K followers. Graph below. \u00a0 We analyzed all these handles closely to see these differences in followers. Out of all the handles we are analyzing, about 40 of them have slightly larger drops in the followers. You see all the 40 handles together on the Dashboard URL. We continue adding different analyses on our Dashboard. \u00a0Now you can search (see image below) for a handle in the portal to find their activity in terms of followers, followings, and tweets.\u00a0 We also saw sharp increase in some political handles roughly during the period 30 Sept &#8211; 14 Oct. For @narendramodi and @RahulGandhi we found steady increase of followers, while the decrease on Nov 7, 2018 was 100K followers and 10K followers respectively. Stay tuned for more analysis! We are collecting data for 925 handles. Below is the histogram \/ distribution of number of tweets per handle. We see 41 handles having 0 tweets and 90 handles having less than 132 tweets on their timeline. See below for detailed distribution of tweets vs handles. If you have any questions for us to answer, please drop an email at pk[at]iiitd[dot]ac[dot]in we will be happy to answer it for you and credit the same for you. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1346,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections2019","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2964"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3281,"href":"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions\/3281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/precog.iiit.ac.in\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}