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Writer's pictureAmit Mathur

How Can Public Figures Protect Their Online Reputation in the Face of Social Media Criticism?

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor received a lawyer's letter after asking X owner Elon Musk about his falling follower count on the social media platform.

Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor is very active on social media, sharing thoughts and opinions. However, social media users informed Tharoor that his follower count is stuck despite his active engagement on the platform. He currently has 8.4 million followers on X.


Responding to one such post, Tharoor shared that he had written a letter to Elon Musk regarding the same. He received a lawyer's letter as a response to the enquiry, “flatly denying” such a problem.


“After three years plus of noticing this and no change under @X, I wrote to @elonmusk to inquire about this and received a lawyer’s letter in return — flatly denying there was a problem! So much for corporate responsiveness…,” Tharoor wrote on X.

Tharoor shared the incident while replying to an X user's post.

“Who can tell us,@elonmusk, why, despite being tremendously liked by people across various lines, Dr.@ShashiTharoor's @X followers remain stuck at 8.4M?” the user wrote.

Tharoor said his follower count has been stuck for four years.

“Good question. This has been the case for four years! A source at the old Twitter India told me there was a problem he couldn’t understand: he had reviewed my daily statistics over six months, and found a strange pattern — my followers went up by over 1000 a day, about 60 - 70 “unfollowed” me each day, but my overall followers total wouldn’t budge above 8.495 million,” Tharoor wrote.


"Shashi Tharoor's Letter to Elon Musk: What Really Happened with the Falling Follower Count?"

Tharoor thought he was shadow-banned by the social media platform.

“He thought it was an algorithm glitch. Since my account is never “suggested” for anyone to follow, and many of my followers complain about not receiving most of my posts on their timeline, I wondered if I had been “shadow-banned”. (My source has since left@X),” he wrote.


The Congress leader claimed that the consequence of his letter to Musk was that his follower count is dropping every day. He went public about this issue as many people started observing it.


“The only practical consequence of my inquiry is that my followers count now drops unsteadily each day — from the peak of 8.495m to 8.429m today. There is clearly something wrong that the people in charge of @XCorpIndia don’t care about. But more and more people have been noticing and asking me, so i have finally decided to go public about it.” he said.

“Given all the more important issues in our public life, it seems too petty to mention. But whether it is deliberate or accidental, i hope those asking understand that there is a problem. Perhaps laying it out here might get the attention of someone responsible @XCorpIndia— but I am not holding my breath!” he added.

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