A report from Twitter Audit suggests that only 51 percent of Trump's 31 million followers are real, while Botomoter estimates half of his followers are bot.
- May 31, 2017
AceShowbiz - Donald Trump is an active Twitter user, with more than 31 million users following his personal account, @realdonaldtrump. With the whopping number of followers that is quickly raising, people begin questioning if Trump's followers are real as many of his newest followers are accounts without profile pictures.
Suspicions were first raised after screenwriter John Niven saw Trump's account gaining three million followers over the weekend. "Trump's Twitter acc has suddenly gained 3 mil followers and has been blocking lots of people. New followers look like this...," so Niven wrote, before he quickly deleted his tweet.
The allegations were further supported by a report from Twitter Audit, an online service to check for fake followers, which found that only 51 percent of Trump's followers are real. In addition, of 10 million followers the POTUS has gained since January, about 8.3 million are fake. Botomoter, a tool developed by The Observatory on Social Media, also estimated 50 percent of Trump's followers are bot.
Here's the @twitter audit report for Trump. Almost 15mil fake followers... These are bots, folks! #TrumpRussia #PutinPuppet #fakenews 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/yTQna123tx
— J∂§øNâ„¢ (@jason_reporting) May 30, 2017
However, a Twitter spokesman, Nicholas Pacilio, called the methodology used by Twitter Audit "very flawed," and didn't believe if Trump's account contained an inordinate number of non-human followers. "He didn't gain three million followers at all," Pacilio said, before adding that many Twitter users may not appear active. "Many, many, many users don't tweet ever. But they are real people who log on every day," he shared.
The White House has yet to comment on the accusations of Trump's fake Twitter followers.
