Cristiano Ronaldo is a lot of things – the Portuguese captain, a 5-time Champions League winner, one of the GOATs (Greatest of All Time), highest active goal scorer (954 goals and counting), and, as declared by Bloomberg Index earlier this year… football’s first billionaire.
But he is also the most popular celebrity in the world. With over 1 billion followers on social media across platforms like Instagram (668 million), Facebook (171 million), X (105 million), YouTube (77 million), and other sites, no celebrity can match the popularity of the Portuguese legend.
However, with such popularity, Ronaldo is under increased pressure as any slip-up could cause his fan-following to tumble down… something which may have just happened over the last few days.
Over the last few days, Ronaldo has been mysteriously losing followers.
Coincidentally, this comes merely days after Ronaldo met Donald Trump, the President of the United States.
On November 18th, Ronaldo and his fiancée, Georgina Rodriguez, were invited for an extravagant White House state dinner to honor Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The interaction did not go down well with a lot of Ronaldo’s loyal fans, with some fans being so enraged that they were threatening to “unfollow” the Portuguese star.
“If you scored a million goals, it wouldn’t make a difference. Congrats on ruining your legacy and disappointing your fans.”
In the week since he met Donald Trump at the White House, Cristiano Ronaldo has lost more than 9 million followers on X (previously Twitter). The Portuguese star’s follower count has gone from 115 million to 106 million within days.
However, despite the huge backlash Ronaldo got after meeting Trump, that is not the reason he has lost over 9 million followers.
The actual reason there’s a substantial decrease in his follower count is the bot purge going on at X (formerly Twitter).
Since Elon Musk took over the social media app, there has been an influx of bot accounts on the platform. So every once in a while, there is a bot purge and all the bot accounts are removed to improve user experience and combat spam.
someone said he’s losing followers, and I thought it was one of those banger hunting posts, but it’s real wtf he was at 2.7M yesterday. https://t.co/JJqubILjwN
— Nathaniel (@Natold_69) November 30, 2025
Interestingly, Ronaldo wasn’t the only high-profile case to notice a substantial decrease in follower count. Barcelona’s Pedri also suffered a similar fate as his follower count dropped from 2.7 million to 2.5 million overnight.
Even outside football, celebrities like Taylor Swift also noticed a decrease in followers as more than 6 million of her followers were swiped away from the popular singer.
