Conservative Twitter accounts got boost in followers after Musk acquisition, data shows

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

It's not your imagination, follower counts have been shifting wildly in response to news that Musk had finalized a deal to acquire the platform.

The data from Social Blade shows that influential conservative accounts have increased their follower counts ten times the average daily rate for the month leading up to the acquisition.

After a month of gains, popular liberal accounts lost hundreds of thousands of followers on April 25th and 26th.

The changes are unlikely to be the result of changes within the management of the platform, as the deal will not close for months and Musk has not had time to affect operations. Users either joined or left the platform in anticipation of Musk's ownership, which appears to be an organic reaction to the news.

The data supports claims made by prominent conservatives like Donald Trump Jr, who claimed that he had disproportionate follower gains on April 26th.

A list of 100 influential accounts, 50 each from the political left and right, and each with a minimum of 100,000 followers, was compiled by The Verge to investigate the claims.

We pulled 30 days of historical data on the number of followers for each account and calculated the day-to-day change as an absolute value and percentage change. Average values were calculated for the percentage change across both ideological groups. You can view the full dataset and calculations on the website.

48 conservative accounts made large follower gains on April 25th and 26th, while only two lost followers. The conservative accounts gained 17,229 followers on April 26th. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis gained 141,556 followers.

All 50 liberal accounts lost followers over the course of two days. The Vice President's account lost the most followers on April 26th, with their follower count decreasing by 22,453.

The change seemed to be a net gain for the company in terms of users. A net increase of 638,000 followers was added to conservative accounts when losses between April 25th and April 26th are subtracted from gains. The exact number of new accounts is hard to say since there are significant overlaps between the new followers of many accounts, but there is strong evidence that account gains outweigh losses.

The exact cause for the dramatic changes in follower count is still unclear, although NBC News claims that it was caused by an increase in new account creation and deactivation.

A request for comment was not immediately responded to.