Republican Senator John McCain made a fervent request on Twitter for more followers and the internet is fiercely trolling him over it with thousands unfollowing him en masse.

"We're only 74 Twitter followers away from 3M - spread the word and help us reach this big milestone!" A tweet on the senator's Twitter account read on Monday (4 December).

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At the time of the tweet, McCain had 2,999,926 followers. Within four hours, he had just only 2,989,196 followers — a drop of 10,730 followers. At the time of publication, he had about 2.97 million followers with the number still declining.

Many people slammed the senator's "tone-deaf" request just days after he voted in favour of the GOP's controversial tax reform bill that was hurriedly passed just before 2:00am local time (7am UK time) on Saturday.

Many Democrats furiously slammed the bill that was pushed for a vote before they had time to read it over completely and tweeted photos of large swaths of policy changes that were written by hand in the margins of the significant bill before a revised version was released.

Touted by Trump and Republicans as a middle-class tax cut, the bill would include tax breaks for businesses and higher-earning individuals, increase taxes for graduate students and millions others, and would allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Twitter was quick to furiously remind McCain of his vote and boost an already terrible reply-to-retweet ratio. Others pointed out that the haemorrhage of Twitter followers seemed to have slowed down after an "army of bots" began following his account.

"This is a priority of yours?" one Twitter user wrote. "But screwing over Americans by voting yes on the TaxScam bill is no big deal? WTH has happened to you? You've fully crossed over to the shallow, selfish, dark side. SMH."

"Sorry, man - you betrayed us, the American people, with this horrendous tax scam bill. I'll not be following you on Twitter or by example until you do the right thing & withdraw from this mess in the bill's reconciliation," another user wrote.

"Here's another one you're losing. Enjoy your huge tax reform windfall of $$$. The rest of us will get along the best we can. I thought you had some integrity," one person wrote expressing anger over the new taxation policy.

Another Twitter user chimed: "Unfollowed John McCain because I thought there was hope for him. I was as wrong about him as I was about parachute pants, Windows 8, and MySpace."

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Republican Senator John McCain is losing tens of thousands of followers on Twitter after he called for more followers in light of the controversial tax reform vote. REUTERS/Charles Mostoller
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