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.