PK has most fake followers on Twitter

External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and TS minister K.T. Rama Rao are the only two top leaders who have more real followers than fakes as compared to other leaders, a quick check of their accounts using the twitteraudit tool by this newspaper shows.

Even they have fake followers, but with 69 per cent real followers, they surpass Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has just about 55 per cent. Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan who has been doing politics only on Twitter has 54 per cent fake followers, the highest among politicians.

YSR Congress chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has more real followers on Twitter than TD president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. Only half of those following AP IT minister Nara Lokesh are real.

Many politicians in India have a large number of fake followers, and this was checked using twitteraudit, which is not affiliated with Twitter. This newspaper ran an audit using pro-subscription.

The tool audits all Twitter followers and assesses them on the number of tweets, followers, mutual followers and other parameters. Last year, an audit from the same tool showed that only 39 per cent of Mr Modi’s followers were real.

Twitter has been addressing the issue of fake followers. In February, it purged millions of fake accounts. This was evident from the fall in the number of fake followers across accounts.

Having fake followers has serious implications, including influencing elections.

One of the main roles of fake accounts is to boost the message that a politician wants to convey by constant retweets and likes.

Several retweets to a text have the potential to amplify only one message. So, if someone searches for particular hashtag, the person will find the amplified message eventually suppressing other points of view.

“Fake followers are used to amplify messages. It is not really important to have many followers. Ultimately it is the engagement that is important. If the content is not good it is not sustainable in the long-term. Our attention had gone to fake followers in 2013 when Mr Modi pointed to it during the campaign in Hyderabad,” said Mr Kalluri Kiran Chandra, former AP BJP IT cell secretary.

When contacted, twitteraudit did not respond.

Mr Srinivas Kodali, an independent security researcher, said, “Twitter has access to do broader analytics, but they don’t want to do analytics like Facebook. Because the more people they can show, the more the stock price that Twitter has.”