Twitter removes 'locked account'; Trump, Obama's followers see sharp drop

US President Donald Trump lost about 100,000 of his 53.4 million followers, while his predecessor Barack Obama saw a significant drop of nearly 400,000 of his 104 million followers as Twitter began removing accounts locked by it for their suspicious activity, a media report said.

The move of the microblogging site is a part of its efforts to sanitise its platform, rife with spam, trolling and other questionable practices, The Washington Post reported.

Twitter has 336 million users logging in monthly, but many of the frozen profiles were not active at least once a month.

The company said the move would affect about six per cent of follower counts across the service and the most popular accounts could experience a significant drop in followers over the next week.

Following the move, President Trump lost about 100,000 of his 53.4 million followers, and former president Obama lost about 400,000 of his 104 million followers, the Post reported.