Firm to increase Twitter profiles
Hollywood or bots as stars use
PAUL Hollywood, Martha Lane Fox and James Cracknell paid a firm that allegedly uses fake accounts to boost people’s Twitter followings, it has emerged.
They are reportedly among more than 200,000 customers – including reality TV stars, athletes, comedians and models – who have signed up to American company Devumi.
The firm sells Twitter followers and retweets to anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online. It works by using an estimated stock of at least 3.5million automated accounts, a New York Times investigation found.
Great British Bake Off judge Paul Hollywood reportedly bought some of his 600,000 Twitter followers from the American website.
By comparison, his fellow judge on Bake Off, Prue Leith, has only 20,000 followers. After Hollywood was contacted by the New York Times, the 51-year-old deleted his account.
Baroness Lane-Fox, who cofounded LastMinute.com and karaoke bar chain Lucky Voice, blamed a ‘rogue employee’ for at least seven batches of purchases using her email address spanning more than a year.
Her biggest increase saw her gain 25,000 followers and was made days after she became a Twitter board member in April 2016.
Meanwhile, British rowing world and Olympics champion James Cracknell bought 50,000 followers from Devumi in 2016. The 45-yearold, who has 100,000 followers on the site, told the New York Times: ‘I don’t want anybody following me who is not interested in me. It’s fraud.’
According to data analysis, at least 55,000 of Devumi’s accounts use the names, pictures and personal details of real Twitter users.
In the social media world, followers translate into money. The more followers a person has, the more money companies are willing to pay for that person to endorse certain products.
Devumi is thought to sell followers for around 1p each. Devumi’s founder, German Calas, denied that his company sold fake followers.
He said: ‘The allegations are false, and we do not have knowledge of any such activity.’
A Twitter spokesman said the firm did not typically suspend users suspected of buying ‘bots’ [fake accounts], in part because it is difficult for the business to know who is responsible for any given purchase.
Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has been investigating the spread of fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, told the paper: ‘The continued viability of fraudulent accounts and interactions on social media platforms... is an indication that there’s still much work to do.’
Representatives for Mr Hollywood, Baroness Lane-Fox and Mr Cracknell have been contacted for comment.