00:00President Donald Trump and Katy Perry are among the public figures who've been hit
00:04in a big way by the Twitter follower purge. Twitter is making good on its pledge to purge
00:09frozen accounts from its users' follower counts. And after the new policy went into effect
00:14on Thursday, several public figures saw major declines in their Twitter followings.
00:18Perry, who bears the title of the most followed person on the social media network,
00:23also stood to lose the most followers. And she did. The change to the rhythm singer had
00:28109.6 million followers on July 11th, but by midday July 12th, that count had dropped
00:34by 2.8 million followers to 106.8 million. Another star who saw a big change was Justin Bieber,
00:42the number two most followed person on the platform, who lost around 2 million followers.
00:47Meanwhile, Taylor Swift lost 1.8 million followers and Rihanna lost 856,000.
00:53Twitter super user Trump lost just short of 196,000 followers, bringing his count to 53.2 million.
01:00And former President Barack Obama, who now has 101.2 million followers, lost around 2 million followers
01:07thanks to the purge. Twitter announced his plan to crack down on fake followers on July 11th.
01:13In a blog post, the company said that any frozen accounts, which are locked because of sudden changes
01:18in behavior, would no longer be included in follower counts.
01:22Per Twitter, most users would only experience a change of up to four followers.
01:26But some larger accounts were expected to experience larger drops in their followings.
01:31It is unclear whether the full scope of the purge has already been felt,
01:34or whether Twitter users will continue to see a drop in their follower counts.
01:38For more on this story, head to THR.com. And let me know in the comments,
01:42did you feel the effects of the great Twitter purge?
01:44Until next time, for The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Tiffany Taylor.
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