I firstly appreciate you for always checking out my website  to read, explore and learn together as we grow our digital industry. This article specifically comes to respond to several questions raised over my previous article titled “NTV Uganda, Daily Monitor top FAKE followed brands.

 

I should remind you that earlier this year I broke the news of how several top brands were involved in this illicit business of buying fake followers. I mentioned it in my 04th January 2018 tweet “There is no way our digital industry will grow if exemplary brands like Next Media are spending a fortune on buying fake followers and impressions. 76% fake followers on Nile Post account?????".

 

I sent the above tweet after my 6 months of investigation into this fake follower buying by brands operating here. After several online attacks that came from aggrieved parties, I went into in-depth research to find ways of really exposing them with reliance on internationally accredited tech and digital marketing writers, contributors and editors of which I passionately follow and read their work everyday. 

 

Eric Zorn is one of those guys I seriously keep track and read his work. Following my early January  write ups on Fake followers, I realized that there were no serious articles that had deeply written about this vice. It’s of no surprise that when New York Times published a detailed investigative report titled “The Follower Factory”, all key writers rushed to supplement and extracted key points from it to their blogs. 

 

I read the NYT report but found no reason to replicate it or comment on it. I was already preparing my article on our brands in Uganda that are involved in this scam. Eric Zorn analyzed the New York Times report and he surely produced a good article which rhymes to specifically what I wanted my article to flow. I quoted his first line since we shared the same thought on Fake followers. He made many mistakes in his article like stating that the New York Times article was released on Jan 28th which wasn’t true. It was rather Jan 27th as I published in my article. That’s already a difference between the two articles. 

 

I acknowledge the error in not concluding with crediting the first two paragraphs which I quoted from Eric. I actually had the citation and credit in my draft. It was supposed to conclude the paragraphs but since I kept referring to other sources of my work, I skipped it in the final copy that was uploaded online. I disregard the tweet that is moving online with the two comparisons and I encourage readers to find the articles by themselves, read them and spot the differences rather than us relying on tweets from affected parties. 

 

I also note that my article has negatively affected many parties and I have no control over that because I surely said; we must clean the house! If we are concerned about transparency, we should have raised key questions on why our brands have for a long time been faking online numbers and presence. Aren’t we Majoring in Minors?

 

....@MathiasSsemanda....