Trump tweets confusing Twitter conspiracy theory to explain why people aren’t following him

'Big complaints from many people'

U.S. President Donald Trump takes phone calls from children as he participates in tracking Santa Claus' movements with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Santa Tracker on Christmas Eve in the East Room of the White House December 24, 2018 (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Donald Trump says he has fewer Twitter followers than he wants because the site is making it too hard to follow him.

The company is both making it difficult to follow his tweets and is removing followers from accounts, he claimed, in a series of posts in which he bragged about the size of his Twitter followings.

Despite the president's claims that it was "hard for people to sign on", following his account is just the same as with any other, and involves simply pressing one button.

And though he said that Twitter was "constantly taking people off list", there is no suggestion that any such purge has focused on Mr Trump. Twitter regularly removes followers and accounts for being used for spam or breaking its rules, sometimes leading to substantial drops in follower counts, but such efforts hit just about every large account.

In the tweets, Mr Trump began by quoting Maria Bartiroma, a US TV commentator, who he said had claimed "The best thing ever to happen to Twitter is Donald Trump".

"So true, but they don’t treat me well as a Republican," he wrote after the quote. "Very discriminatory, hard for people to sign on. Constantly taking people off list. Big complaints from many people. Different names-over 100 M..

".....But should be much higher than that if Twitter wasn’t playing their political games. No wonder Congress wants to get involved - and they should. Must be more, and fairer, companies to get out the WORD!"

The confusing reference to "different names-over 100M" is presumably a reference to the fact that Mr Trump's team maintain a number of different accounts in his name – though the two primary ones, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS, together have fewer than 100 million followers.

It is not the first time that Mr Trump has claimed he should have more followers, and that social media sites are intentionally limiting him. Late last year, for instance, he tweeted angry messages about a range of technology companies, accusing each of them of limiting his reach.

"Facebook, Twitter and Google are so biased toward the Dems it is ridiculous!" he wrote. "Twitter, in fact, has made it much more difficult for people to join @realDonaldTrump. They have removed many names & greatly slowed the level and speed of increase. They have acknowledged-done NOTHING!"