Yesterday afternoon, Rep. Frank White responded to a blog post regarding the large number of Twitter followers that his campaign Twitter as collected, many of which appear to be of dubious origins.
“Shortly after I announced for Attorney General, over 30K (twitter) accounts started following our handle (@FrankWhiteFL),” texted White. “Our campaign has not paid any 3rd party not sought to acquire promoted followers.”
He added, “We have been working with Twitter since these followers popped up trying to address how to ascertain which accounts are authentic.”
Inweekly hints on how to determine Twitter followers are fake:
1. No cover photo – @Lucas_bangbang, @PetraWilliner, @Hosung860521 â€
2. Handle contains what appear to be random letters, numbers and symbols – @x03x03, @jktwk31, @tor__1 â€
3. The posts are in a foreign language – @pikasaki7, @TanutThammakul, @abdullahsharief
4. Exponentially follows more people than is followed by, most posts are retweets – @vesileonay, @aaomjai, @joe_joeshirk189
Or seek professional help:
Today I used a service to audit my Twitter account. Out of my 4,513 followers, 4432 were determined to be real – 98% valid, and I blocked the fake ones.
The same service let me check out Frank White’s 31.7K followers and 17.8K were considered questionable. 43% valid
Cris Dosev 12.4K Twitter followers – 6,069 dubious. Â 44% valid
Matt Gaetz 13.7K – 616 possibly fake. Â 95% valid
Update – 12/14/17:  Cris Dosev informed me that hasn’t purchased any followers or have made any effort to promote his twitter page.
Poca,
You’ve shown there is a simple fix. Why want the politicians do it?
Focus on the issues rather than the forum
Poca,
You are the one bringing up the President, not me. As you proved, it’s not expensive or difficult to determine fake followers. Politicians don’t have to wait for Twitter. Simply do the audit you cited and have them deleted. Not difficult, not expensive.
No one sees fake Twitter followers as a free speech issue. The candidates need to get their messages out to real people – not @x03x03, @jktwk3 or @tor__1
So tweet away – the bots in China will love it.
-Rick â€
The funny thing is who cares what the accounts have on them. Surely you now also attack the President because of his 19,000,00 fake followers. So now you are also anti Trump! If you were a social media expert you would know that when accounts get that large inevitably bots hop on. Twitter eventually combs through the bots. And the followers are not official votes anyway. Why does it matter who follows them and who does not. If the followers are fake it only matters to the candidates political campaign. Since you can’t find anything objectionable you now object to their free speech rights pf candidates and how they get their message out? You simply want to stir controversy to get your papers out. You are not a reporter you are a stirrer just to stir. Focus on the issues not how the message gets out. Next you will say a candidate can’t have more than a soap box to get their message out. This is pathetic that a hometown newspaper would have to stoop so low instead of bringing us facts that matter on the issues.
No attack – The fact is White and Dosev have bloated Twitter accounts. What did your Twitter Audits of their accounts find out? My account? Your account?
So almost half of Donald Trump’s followers are fake according to these so called audits. It is just another attack against a candidate by someone who has no clue what they are talking about.
Twitter Audit Report
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
24,728,997 Real
19,747,616 Fake
Followers
55% Audit scoreView Tweet Re-Audit! Last updated 5 hours ago.
https://www.twitteraudit.com/realdonaldtrump