Canadian singer Justin Bieber and other high-profile celebrities, including Taylor Swift and Cristiano Ronaldo, are witnessing a dramatic and swift decline in their follower counts on X (formerly Twitter). The phenomenon, which initially sparked wild conspiracy theories, is actually part of a massive, ongoing spam bot purge being conducted by the Elon Musk-owned platform.
Bieber’s followers plummeted from around 110 million to under 90 million in just a few days, a steep drop that fans noticed immediately after he posted photos with his wife, Hailey, on November 28.
Celebrity Followers Decimated
The decline is widespread across celebrity accounts:
- Justin Bieber: Lost millions, dropping below the 90 million mark.
- Cristiano Ronaldo: Reportedly saw a loss of up to 7 million followers.
- Anupam Kher: The veteran Indian actor openly tagged Elon Musk, reporting a loss of more than 900,000 followers in the preceding two weeks, stating, “By the way this is an OBSERVATION, not a COMPLAINT! Yet.”
- Other Stars: Accounts belonging to Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj have also recorded significant drops.
This widespread loss is not an indication of being “canceled,” but rather a sign that the platform is aggressively removing inauthentic accounts.
X Confirms Massive Clean-Up Drive
The “follower hunting” theories circulating online were definitively dismissed by internal company confirmations. The head of product at X, Nikita Bier, informed users in October that a large-scale clean-up drive was underway.
“This week we purged 1.7 million bots engaging in reply spam. You should start noticing improvements in the coming days. We will be focusing on DM spam next,” Bier stated.
The latest wave of follower loss indicates that X is escalating its efforts to address the spam issue that Musk has repeatedly vowed to fix since acquiring the platform. Musk’s in-house AI chatbot, Grok, also confirmed the initiative, stating: “X is actively removing bots—in October 2025, they purged 1.7 million reply spam bots, with more cleanups planned for DMs.”
Despite the explanation, Bieber added a touch of humor to the chaos, posting a photo of himself hilariously “flipping off” the entire X community without context, further fueling the online banter.