India’s internet-savvy PM Narendra Modi said he may soon abandon his highly-trafficked social media pages, prompting an outpouring of posts from supporters begging him to stay, and threats of an exodus to locally-made platforms.
“This Sunday, thinking of giving up my social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & YouTube. Will keep you all posted,” Modi said in a tweet on Monday, offering no further explanation for the decision.
It wasn’t long before the PM’s backers came out in force to plead with him to stay online, driving the hashtag #NoSir trending in short order.
One diehard supporter apparently skipped straight over the first two stages of grieving, directly to bargaining, asking how many retweets Modi’s post would need to garner before he would reconsider the move.
Others decided it was high time Indian developers launched a local alternative to the platforms now dominating the market, with thousands tweeting under the hashtag #MakeInIndia, some even suggesting the government itself had plans to make it happen.
A sizable crowd of netizens were more accepting of the decision, however, and vowed to follow Modi’s lead and undergo their own digital detox.
With a combined 137 million followers, Modi is among the most popular world leaders on social media, boasting over 35 million Instagram followers, nearly 45 million on Facebook and over 53 million on Twitter.
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