No, Taylor Swift didn't lose 17 million followers after Harris endorsement | Fact check

Hannah Hudnall, USA TODAY

The claim: Taylor Swift lost 17 million Instagram followers after endorsing Kamala Harris

A Sept. 16 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a screenshot of musician Taylor Swift's Instagram account, which has 284 million followers.

"Taylor Swift had 301 Million Instagram followers last week," reads the post's caption. "She endorsed Kamala Harris 5 days ago. She now only has 284 Million followers. She lost 17 Million followers by endorsing Kamala."

The post garnered more than 900 likes in a week. Other versions of the claim were shared on Threads and Facebook, where some users claimed Swift had lost 100 million followers.

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Our rating: False

Swift didn't lose millions of followers after she endorsed the vice president. A social media analytics tracker shows she gained hundreds of thousands of followers in the days after her announcement.

Swift gained followers after Harris endorsement

Swift made national headlines after she shared a Sept. 10 Instagram post formally endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

The endorsement was met with criticism by some, including former President Donald Trump, who wrote in a Sept. 15 Truth Social post, "I Hate Taylor Swift!" But the claim about Swift losing 17 million followers after her endorsement is baseless.

Swift actually gained followers following the announcement, according to Social Blade, a website that tracks social media analytics. The website shows the musician gained more than 140,000 followers on Sept. 10, the day she endorsed Harris, and accumulated over 250,000 more the following day. Swift continued to gain thousands of followers every day until Sept. 17, when she lost about 1,500.

Though the post claims Swift had 301 million followers before her endorsement, a graph on Social Blade shows she never had more than 284 million followers.

There are no credible reports about the musician losing millions of followers.

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Two self-described satire accounts shared similar claims that Swift lost millions of followers after the endorsement. The Patriots Network claimed on Sept. 11 that she lost 100 million followers, while America's Last Line of Defense said in a Sept. 17 post that she lost 30 million followers.

USA TODAY reached out to Swift's team for comment but did not immediately receive a response. The user who shared the post couldn't be reached for comment.

Lead Stories also debunked the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Harris endorsement didn't cost Swift Instagram followers | Fact check

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