Reports of PM Modi having 60% fake followers false: Twitter
What's the story
Twitter has discredited the reports of top Indian politicians like Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi having fake followers on the micro-blogging platform. Earlier, reports surfaced that the Twitter accounts of politicians including BJP President Amit Shah and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor are infested with bots as followers. However, Twitter has cleared the air and termed the reports as baseless.
Information
False claims
The false reports had claimed that Gandhi has the highest percentage of fake followers on Twitter at 67%, followed by Shah, Tharoor, and Modi. The reports claimed that out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 41 million followers, 61% were fake.
Details
Twitter has no fake follower measurement tool, as claimed earlier
The false reports surfaced on the basis of a fake follower measurement tool called Twitter Audit. It claimed to have found out that Modi, Gandhi, and Shah led the list of politicians with fake followers globally. But Twitter has now clarified that Twitter Audit is in no way affiliated with the company and is actually a flawed external platform.
Context
Twitter Audit has no source or authentic veracity: Twitter
"The methodology used by Twitter Audit is deeply flawed and their incorrect information should not be taken seriously," a Twitter spokesperson said. The external tool takes a sample of 5,000 Twitter followers and calculates how many of them might be fake on the basis of parameters like the number of tweets, date of last tweet, followers, and mutual followers.
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Twitter Audit agrees its scoring method is not perfect
Notably, Twitter Audit's website says that its "scoring method is not perfect but it is a good way to tell if someone with lots of followers is likely to have increased their follower count by inorganic, fraudulent, or dishonest means."