Popularity on social media is a bit questionable at best. It’s like sitting at an imaginary ‘cool kids’ table in high school–and I do mean imaginary. However, there are those who use the number of followers on Twitter as a gauge of something. What, I don’t know, but something. At any rate, the question is, “How many people on Twitter are actually real people?”
Breitbart posted an article on Wednesday reporting that nearly half of President Joe Biden’s 22.3 million Twitter followers are fake accounts. One wonders who set up these fake accounts and why they were set up.
The article reports:
Software company SparkToro found that 49.3 percent of accounts following the official @POTUS Twitter account are “fake followers” or inauthentic accounts known as bots, according to a report by Newsweek.
The same analysis reportedly also found that more than 14 million accounts that follow Biden’s personal @JoeBiden Twitter account are either fake or insufficiently active. Therefore, a crackdown on fake Twitter accounts could see users like Biden lose a huge number of followers.
SparkToro reportedly defines fake followers as “accounts that are unreachable and will not see the account’s tweets (either because they’re spam, bots, propaganda, etc. or because they’re no longer active on Twitter).”
The news of Biden’s fake Twitter followers comes after Tesla founder Elon Musk, who is currently trying to buy Twitter, expressed concerns about the number of bots on the social media platform.
Musk has since announced that his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter cannot move forward until the number of bot accounts on the platform is independently confirmed.
The SpaceX CEO tweeted that his offer was based on “Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate,” and he believes bots could account for 20 percent of the platform “or *much* higher.”
All of this has come to light because of Elon Musk’s plan to purchase Twitter. The article at Breitbart notes that uncovering these numbers may actually be part of Elon Musk’s negotiation process to acquire Twitter. Knowing that Elon Musk is a successful businessman who knows how to negotiate, that is entirely possible.