Jack Dorsey reassured Donald Trump that his Twitter follower count has not been unfairly reduced, in a face-to-face meeting between the social network’s chief executive and the US president on Tuesday.

According to a person briefed on the meeting, Mr Dorsey told the president that a crackdown launched last year on fake accounts and bots had affected users all across the service. Barack Obama, the former president, lost more followers in the wake of that action than Mr Trump did, the company has said.

The meeting at the White House followed a flurry of angry tweets on the subject from the president on Tuesday morning, shortly before Twitter published quarterly results that suggested advertisers and users are embracing its attempts to curtail abuse and other problems on its site.