Twitter begins booting idle followers.

People with prominent accounts could see their numbers drop by hundreds of thousands

If you have a large number of Twitter followers, well, take another look. Twitter is doing something that could make that number shrink overnight.

On Wednesday, Twitter said it has started removing the profiles of followers whose accounts have been locked by the company’s security team, and who have been inactive for a significant length of time. Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal, policy, trust and safety lead, said in a company blog post that removing the suspicious followers is part of the company’s ongoing efforts to “build trust and encourage healthy conversation on Twitter.”

“Follower counts are a visible feature,” Gadde said. “And we want everyone to have confidence that the numbers are meaningful and accurate.”

Gadde added that most Twitter users will see a decline of about four followers. However, celebrities and public officials, many of whom have millions of followers, are likely to witness their follower count drop by the hundreds of thousands.

For example, the Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump’s Twitter followers fell by 100,000, from the 53.4 million he had Tuesday night. Former President Barack Obama had 400,000 followers shaved from his 104 million total.

Gadde said there are multiple reasons why Twitter may remove a locked account from someone’s follower numbers, including a sudden change in an account’s behavior, such as tweeting out misleading links and unsolicited replies, and when a sizable number of users block an account after being mentioned by that account.

Gadde went on to say that trimming follower accounts wouldn’t have an impact on the

company’s daily or monthly active users.

The assurance comes less than a week after the Washington Post reported, late last Friday, that Twitter removed about 70 million fake or suspicious accounts in May and June. Twitter reported it had 336 million monthly average users during the first quarter of this year.

That Post report boosted the fears of Twitter’s investors about the company’s ability to grow its monthly user base, and Twitter shares have fallen more than 6 percent this week.

Twitter could be in line for an even greater drop, according to Nomura Instinet analyst Mark Kelley.

On Tuesday, Kelley started his coverage of Twitter with a rating of reduce — or, the equivalent of sell — and set a price target for Twitter’s stock at $31 a share. Kelley’s target is almost 30 percent lower than Twitter’s closing price of $43.75 on Tuesday.

Kelley said in a research note that expectations for Twitter are too high because the company’s shares have risen more than 80 percent this year, and there are risks to Wall Street’s consensus earnings estimates. Kelley said that during the first quarter of 2018, Twitter saw better-than-expected growth in its efforts to monetize ads and other new revenue platforms, and he expects the company to have a tough time exceeding its efforts next year.

As such, Kelley said he expects Twitter to earn 82 cents a share in 2019, compared to Wall Street analysts’ consensus estimates of 85 cents a share.