Fake News Awards losers; Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey likely admitted the start of Twitter's censorsh
(Photo credit: Andrew Harrer, Bloomberg, Getty Images; Seen on cnbc.com; Photo of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey)
The biggest Twitter losers of Donald Trump’s Fake News Awards within the last year and a half are Newsweek, Anderson Cooper and Brian Ross.
According to the numbers, straight up (meaning just looking at people's Twitter followers on one day and then again on another day) Newsweek lost 68,719 Twitter followers, Anderson Cooper lost 8,249 Twitter followers and Brian Ross lost 2,616 Twitter followers.
Cooper on July 17th had more than 9.99 million Twitter followers.
According to Twitter rounding up the numbers, Cooper had approximately 10.1 million followers on February 17th, 2018. Because of Twitter rounding up the numbers, Cooper might have actually lost more Twitter followers than people realize.
To have 10.1 million followers on Twitter means you have to have at least ten million fifty thousand Twitter followers. Or, in other words, you have to have at least half of whatever is the next number you round up to.
Cooper had approximately 10 million followers on January 17th, 2018. He had 10,035,193 Twitter followers on October 17th of last year. So he did in fact lose an additional 35,193 Twitter followers not including the 8,249 Twitter followers we know he lost within the last year and a half.
However, looking at the numbers closer, most Twitter accounts had fewer followers on July 17th, 2018, than on June 17th, 2018, and also they had fewer followers on December 19th, 2018, than on October 17th, 2018. And everybody knows general elections happen in November every year.
Looking closer at the details and using the same formula (for every Twitter account based on the information in the previous paragraph), Newsweek actually lost 94,784 Twitter followers, Anderson Cooper actually lost 174,186 Twitter followers and Brian Ross lost 1,876 Twitter followers. Ross only lost 1,876 Twitter followers because of using the same formula as in the paragraph above. However, Ross actually lost 2,616 Twitter followers (as mentioned six paragraphs above), and which will be explained later.
Based on the information two paragraphs above, Paul Krugman lost 20,529 Twitter followers and Oprah Winfrey lost 265,523 Twitter followers.
What we don't know and what is hard to tell is how many legitimate Twitter followers anyone has lost. Meaning, how many people actually unfollowed somebody vs. Twitter accounts that Twitter purged because they are fake accounts, bots, etc. But it seems that looking at the number of Twitter followers a person lost straight up when comparing two different days (over a long period of time) vs. when looking at the number of Twitter followers a person lost (in a shorter period of time) could provide the difference, or, the answer. Honestly, the previous sentence is speculation.
As of yesterday, July 17th, Brian Ross did lose 1,101 Twitter followers within the last year. That is a fact and there is no disputing that. Actually, Ross lost 1,176 Twitter followers but only gained 75 followers within the last year.
Brian Ross is the biggest loser of the Fake News Awards. He consistently lost followers on a monthly basis from January 17th through December 19th of 2018. In fact, the only one-month period he didn’t lose followers was between September 19th and October 17th of 2018. The only months I missed recording data were in March and November of 2018. So he lost followers in six out of seven possible one-month periods. And he also lost followers in eight out of nine possible one or two-month periods from January 17th through December 19th, 2018.
Barack Obama’s Twitter account gained more than 5.84 million Twitter followers within the last year and not more than 4,641,842 Twitter followers since May 17th of 2018. That is not a misprint. Why is the number lower on May 17th, 2018, for Obama? Because Twitter started getting rid of “compromised accounts” (whatever that means) probably in July 2018.
I know for a fact people lost some of their Twitter followers because of what Twitter did by starting to get rid of compromised accounts in July 2018 and I intend to show you that in the near future because I have the evidence for it.
Between June 17th and July 17th of 2018, most people lost their Twitter followers or had their gains in Twitter followers significantly decreased. It wasn’t just a handful of people or a specific group of people. It happened to everybody.
Compromised accounts could be almost anything as simple as accounts that are fake, inactive, bots or legitimately dangerous to the general public or it could be as extreme as censorship.
Paul Krugman, in addition to Newsweek, Brian Ross and Anderson Cooper still haven't recovered their followers yet from Twitter's purge of accounts in July 2018. Meaning that they don't have the same number of followers or more yet since June 17th, 2018. (Bonus: Oprah Winfrey, who had nothing to do with the Fake News Awards and who some people think she may make a run at the White House as President of the United States, also hasn't recovered either.)
Newsweek, Anderson Cooper (and Oprah) had their peak Twitter followers on June 17th, 2018.
It also appears that the data shows that Twitter might have done another serious purge of accounts in November 2018. Newsweek, Oprah and Krugman have recovered their Twitter following since then. Ross and Cooper have not, which again means that they have less followers (as of July 17th), than they did on October 17th, 2018.
And I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter has done one or two purges of Twitter accounts since the start of this year. I assume Twitter is going to do it three or four times a year (from now on) at least (if it's not a constant thing). If you ask conservatives if they think Twitter's purge of accounts is a constant thing, they will probably tell you that it is.
I also noticed that Brian Ross and Dave Weigel's Twitter followers didn't seem to be all that affected. Meaning that people's Twitter accounts that are being purged with followers have at a minimum of at least 1 million Twitter followers. As of July 17th, based on exact numbers, Ross has less than 46,000 Twitter followers while Weigel has less than 472,000 Twitter followers.
(Weigel is lucky like President Trump or any other very well-liked person and hasn't had fewer Twitter followers at a later date.)
Kanye West also lost more than 15.7 million Twitter followers between September 19th and October 17th, 2018. He somehow regained them all back and more by December 19th, 2018, but somehow has only gained a little more than 271,000 followers since December. It all seems really fishy and is probably due to his support for wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap.
So Kanye West was part of the Twitter lose followers purge in July 2018. He ended up losing his Twitter followers two-months earlier than most people (October 2018). He comes out with a gain in Twitter followers in December 2018 (unlike most people who lost Twitter followers) compared to the previous reporting period (October 2018). And most recently, Kanye had fewer Twitter followers on July 18th, 2019 (July 17th for everybody else basically) than on June 28th, 2019.
His actual support for President Trump is probably an entirely different matter and is speculative at best.
So the losers of the Fake News Awards are Newsweek, Anderson Cooper and Brian Ross. Oprah Winfrey is also in that category (as a loser only) although she was never actually a part of Trump's Fake News Awards and I'm not sure she has actually qualified as being a news personality (or Fake News personality yet). Paul Krugman is a loser since he lost Twitter followers, but he is a loser to a lesser degree because he has more Twitter followers than he did on January 17th, 2018.
This is the sentence where I should rank them, but I'll let you rank them instead. Let me know what you think.
There is no doubt Brian Ross doesn't gain Twitter followers because he isn't well known. And Anderson Cooper lost a major amount of Twitter followers.
As of July 17th, Krugman has 368,394 more Twitter followers than he had on January 17th, 2018. Also as of July 17th, Oprah on the other hand has 160,356 fewer Twitter followers than she had on May 17th, 2018.
Objectively, this is what the rankings should be:
LOSER 1: Anderson Cooper
LOSER 2: Oprah
LOSER 3: Newsweek
LOSER 4: Brian Ross
LOSER 5: Paul Krugman
Objectively, you could make the argument that Oprah should be more of a loser than Anderson Cooper because she lost more followers than Anderson Cooper and Paul Krugman should be more of a loser than Brian Ross because he lost more followers than Brian Ross.
Subjectively, this is what the rankings should be:
LOSER 1: Brian Ross
LOSER 2: Anderson Cooper
LOSER 3: Oprah
LOSER 4: Newsweek
LOSER 5: Paul Krugman
It also needs to be mentioned that there is evidence that Twitter was starting to seriously purge people's Twitter followings in May and June 2018.
Twitter likely started purging accounts in March 2018.
A pinned Tweet dated March 1st, 2018, on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's Twitter handle says the following: "We’re committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards progress."
And apparently there is a whole Twitter thread by Dorsey himself explaining things on March 1st, 2018.
Twitter likely continued starting small in purging accounts in April 2018.
So let's set the record straight:
1. Small Twitter purging of accounts in March and April 2018.
2. More significant Twitter purging of accounts in May and June 2018, but still not enough for people to notice.
3. Extreme Twitter purging of accounts in July 2018, that everybody noticed.
4. Twitter likely had another extreme purging of accounts in November 2018.
5. Twitter is going to continue to purge accounts and likely do extreme purges probably three or four times a year. Because that's just what people who have to keep an account of things do.
