Are More Than 20% of Twitter Followers Fake?

Joe Biden’s follower count on Twitter is about as reliable as Chinese drywall.

And we now have the numbers to prove it.

Following a Twitter spam audit, software firm SparkToro found that nearly 50% of Biden’s total Twitter following consists of spam or fake Twitter accounts.

In other words, of the 22 million followers on the president’s account, only about 11 million are real.

Now, I’m not sharing this with you to attack Biden.

He has no control over this, nor should he.

And honestly, if I wanted to criticize the president, I would focus more on things like his inability to back the decriminalization of cannabis — a promise he made while campaigning against former President Trump. 

Or perhaps I would call out his absurd attacks on our nation’s job creators — accusing them of instigating inflation, which any first-year economics student would be able to prove as an unsound assessment based not on reality but on politics. 

Honestly, there are dozens of things Biden has or hasn’t done that are fair game for criticism.

But gaming his Twitter feed is not one of them.

That, dear reader, falls on the folks who run the social media platform, who really have a good thing going but have failed miserably in terms of making it profitable or reliable.

So when Elon Musk said his deal to buy Twitter was on hold until he could verify that the number of spam and fake accounts represent less than 5% of Twitter’s users (which Twitter claims to be the case), I wasn’t surprised. 

I actually don’t buy for one second that it’s less than 5%. In fact, I’m willing to bet it exceeds 20%.

A lot of folks have actually attacked Musk for putting the deal on hold until Twitter could verify its claims. But why would you attack an entrepreneur who simply wants to know exactly what it is he’s buying before he wires the cash?

Would you buy a house without getting an inspection first?

Would you buy a car without test-driving it first?

If Musk is talking about ponying up $44 billion to buy something, why should anyone be surprised that he would want to kick the tires and look under the hood?

It's also worth noting that the same software firm that uncovered Joe Biden’s fake Twitter followers also found that about 70% of Elon Musk’s followers are “unlikely to be authentic, active users who see his tweets.” That’s NOT trivial. 

The way I see it, if Twitter can’t offer some kind of explanation for this — or a much lower purchase price — the deal will never proceed.

Moreover, now that Twitter is being outed for having so many fake accounts, it’s likely to lose a lot of credibility and a lot of “real” users. 

If the folks running Twitter have any sense, they’ll slash the purchase price and work with Musk to gut all those fake accounts and bots. Otherwise, I fear the platform — which I actually like and use regularly — will go the way of Myspace and Friendster.

Musk’s demand to verify the number of fake accounts on Twitter is not only smart but should be a lesson for all investors. 

While we’re always looking for a way to make a quick buck, unless you get some real data to look at and do some real due diligence, you’re always going to be at risk of not only losing cash but also missing out on opportunities to make some real money. 

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Bottom line: It’s steady cash, virtually zero risk, and completely verifiable.

Oh, and for the record, Elon Musk has been making millions from this very type of investment too. 

See exactly what it is and how you can start collecting monthly income streams today.

To a new way of life and a new generation of wealth…

Jeff Siegel

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Jeff is the founder and managing editor of Green Chip Stocks. For more on Jeff, go to his editor’s page.

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