Just about every conversation I’ve had in the past days has come around to the question of how we should regard those who purchase followers on Twitter.
It’s wrong, most people agree. But how wrong?
Wrong like allowing your friends to think your cubic zirconium ring is a diamond? Wrong like lying on a job application? Or somewhere in between?
A bit of background. Twitter is the social media platform where your cachet, your status as an important, brand, voice and influencer, is measured by the number of people who have chosen to follow you — to have your little thought-bursts and promo activity show up in their timelines. That number is displayed on your home page for all to see.
But, as a Jan. 27 New York Times investigative report explained, it’s easy to boost that number by purchasing fake followers for a fraction of a penny each, thus cheaply making yourself seem like a bigger deal than you are. The paper identified “entertainers, entrepreneurs, athletes and media figures,” who’ve bought followers by the tens of thousands, including critic Richard Roeper of the Sun-Times, who has been reinstated after a brief suspension.
The Times article focused on a particular firm, Devumi, for selling phony “bot” followers on Twitter, and included the names of public figures who had paid Devumi for followers. A customer might pay $225 for 25,000 followers to appear more popular on Twitter than they really are, The Times said.
It’s deliberately deceptive. Vain. Manipulative. And the reason this is such a good conversation topic is that it prompts a consideration of the various ways in which people create or allow false impressions to linger, from wearing wigs, lifts or other physical enhancements, representing themselves with old or drastically retouched photos.
Some smart people believe buying followers constitutes an outright lie and one to be taken very seriously in an era when employers, readers and advertisers take notice of and sometimes rely on a brand or person’s reach on social media.
Personally, I got interested in investigating fake followers when I saw one of our local brands claiming to have accumulated 30,000 followers on its day of launch in 2017. A lot of trolls came through claiming that my assertions were baseless but at the same time, key digital marketers in Uganda agreed with me that this Vice was happening at a larger scale. My reason for coming out was simply to caution brands on would be false results given to them by their digital agencies that operate on their behalf.
I am so happy, that within a short time, the New York Times also came up with a stinging article on this and since last month has got heads at the San Francisco HQs rolling.
It’s also from that background that I thought pointing out involved local brands is key such that we get this Vice out for once and for all.
NOTE: Fake followers can either be bought or can come to an account without any authorization from you. Your account can be added to a list of accounts that are recommended to new Twitter users during the sign-up process. Many of our new followers after sign-up were fake, created for the purposes of spam or resale. They had followed us automatically. Personally, I have 140 Fake followers which I didn’t buy or even get involved in recruiting.
I used many tools to come up with these figures. Some tools are premium which I basically paid for and one that’s commonly and freely available for everyone (Twitter Audit) which you can also use to figure out your fake follower count. Below are Ugandan brands with their total followers vis-à-vis FAKE followers.
Total- 705,493
Fake- 452,876
Total- 259,400
Fake- 61,543
Total- 133,177
Fake- 43,451
Total- 513,294
Fake- 372,435
Total- 408,983
Fake- 189,884
Total- 260,522
Fake- 45,980
Total- 41,595
Fake- 20,013
Total- 38,473
Fake- 11,423
Total- 30,364
Fake- 26,110
Total- 50,658
Fake- 15,397
Total- 47,138
Fake- 11,756
Total- 16,785
Fake- 6,025
Total- 33,306
Fake- 2,525
Total- 16,253
Fake- 1,367
Total- 164,259
Fake- 103,021
Total- 144,968
Fake- 70,483
Total- 50,603
Fake- 4,972
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