If you are a Twitter user, you will have verified that the number of followers your account has is not stable. It is possible that at one point you have a specific number and that in a few minutes you will review it and have a dozen fewer followers. It is also possible that hours later the figure has risen considerably.
Why does this happen? If you publish content that goes viral on the platform, you may be able to increase the number of followers naturally, but we are not referring to that, but to when the number of followers you have fluctuates in an apparently arbitrary way and changes, upwards or towards down in a matter of minutes.
It is a question that surely as a tweeter you have asked yourself on more than one occasion. Well, Twitter has stepped up and wanted to resolve users' questions by posting a message on their official support account that makes it very clear.
According to Twitter, the fluctuations have to do with the anti-spam mechanisms that the social network has . When an account is detected that may be misusing the platform, its owner is asked to confirm his identity by indicating his phone number or email account.
While this confirmation occurs, the account is kept in a kind of "quarantine" and, therefore, it stops counting as an active follower for the people whose account it is a follower, as explained in the Twitter tweet, even linking to an explanatory help document:
To clear up confusion about fluctuations in follower counts:
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) January 9, 2021
In order to prevent spam, we regularly challenge accounts to confirm details like email and phone number. Until that info is confirmed, these accounts aren’t included in follower counts. https://t.co/8BYcBCmxxA
This means that Twitter constantly stops counting followers that you have because at those times it is proceeding to verify the ownership of those accounts, either due to a suspicion that is had or routinely. That would explain why your number of followers fluctuates constantly.