Newsweek: Nearly half of Donald Trump's Twitter followers appear to be fake

[kstewart33]

Because Donald Trump is the president of the United States and the most famous person on the planet, one wouldn't think he would need to employ a bot to boost his Twitter following. It appears, however, he might have done just that. As screenwriter John Niven pointed out Tuesday morning, Trump's Twitter account saw an unusual spike in followers over the weekend, many of which appear to have been created artificially.

Trump currently has 31 million followers and, sure enough, if you browse through them you will find an unusual number of tweet-less, picture-less accounts that joined the service in May 2017. If you're still curious, you can enter Trump's handle, @realDonaldTrump, into Twitter Audit, a service that assesses the authenticity of one's followers, and find that only 51 percent of Trump's are real.

More at: [link:http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-twitter-followers-fake-617873|

[dalton99a]

1. Fake leader, fake followers

[world wide wally]

10. Fake votes

[C Moon]

39. Fake promises to people with fake brains.

[malaise]

2. Everything about this fucking CON

is fake

[PatSeg]

29. And did you know

that Trump came up with the term "fake"??? Obviously he is very familiar with its meaning.

[malaise]

46. Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaah hahahahha

of course

[fierywoman]

38. Fake votes? One wonders.

[spanone]

3. K&R...

[Madam45for2923]

4. I wonder if some are paid by the generous people of richest man Putin.

[logosoco]

5. Also interesting to look at the other part of this...

he only follows 45 people. Most of whom are Trump related organizations and Fox news people. Says a lot about this person!

[TexasBushwhacker]

34. I noticed that a long time ago

It's worth noting that Clinton follows 767 and Obama has 93.6 Million followers. I bet that really sticks in Donny's craw.

[L. Coyote]

6. The investigation into who pays for fake supporters will prove interesting.

And who supplies their half faces and half-assed names, and who forgot to add the damn link.

[dalton99a]

9. +1

[calimary]

18. Love how theyve demonstrated a cute way to

become many separate “people” by using a photo of a part of your face, or your collar, or your hairline or something as your “photo”.

(Why can’t I put an apostrophe in the subject line - should be “they've”?)

[Dave Starsky]

20. Or none of them know how to use a camera.

So much for artificial "intelligence".

[IronLionZion]

43. I like how they use the fakest sounding names possible

since Filicia Batny uses a man's photo, what's the story behind people named ato camp, gik craw, Marik Kan, Consta Eric, Mich Darn, and frank Pani.

Marik Kan is obviously very American and totally not Russian at all. Nope.

But they can't even google a list of popular American baby names at least? They haven't watched any American movies lately? If I were a Russian taxpayer, I'd feel like this was a waste of my tax rubles.

[MagickMuffin]

54. Googling names

Marik Kan: facebook: gvn college kovilpatti (is in India)

Filicia Batny? @filiciabatny 11 Dec 2016 Best Tool for hacking into any facebook account, Download here
Filicia Batny? @filiciabatny 11 Dec 2016 Best Tool for infiltrating any gmail account. Download Here

ato camp: only thing on his twitter feed is stuff about soccer.

gik craw: nothing burger

Consta Eric: facebook pages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Polish,

Mich Darn: nothing burger

frank Pani: facebook doesn't seem political at all.

FAKE!!!

[John1956PA]

7. The Russia and Alt-Right propaganda machines create face Twitter and Facebook accounts.

On certain news sites which still offer the "comments" feature, I notice comments posted through Facebook accounts which I suspect are not held by actual individuals. Rather, those accounts seem to have been set up by propaganda machines to present right-wing memes and to be used by the propagandists to post ad-hominem attacks against Democratic politicians.

[kimbutgar]

12. Whenever I see them I aak they are trolls and sonetimes report to Facebook.

No attack comments back and when I look back on my activity the comments I responded are gone.

[smirkymonkey]

8. K&R

[kimbutgar]

11. I hate that twitter is not stopping these fake accounts.

Don’t they have programs that recognize fake accounts?

[Achilleaze]

13. Bwaa ha ha. How republican is that?

What a bunch of lying, cheating sleazebags.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

14. So if half of the 31 million are fake,

he still has nearly 16 million real followers.

I don't do Twitter, so I realize I don't get it, but why would anyone bother to follow such an idiot? What do people see in Twitter anyway? Most of what comes from it appears to be crap.

[Kleveland]

23. Many followers are not necesarily people who like him.

I know some lawyers who hate his fucking guts with a real passion, and take every opportunity to heckle his sorry ass whenever he says anything stupid.

It would be a curious statistic to see how many people the Orange Abomination has banned from following him.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

33. I don't know why anyone would bother to spend time doing that.

[Kleveland]

53. It is what it is. n/t

[Thor_MN]

25. Mouse turds. 140 characters chunks of shit.

Somehow this is more appealing to people with short attention spans.

[lark]

15. He added 9 million in one day not long after the election.

Twitter found that almost all of these were fake Russian bots, not real people. Bet this recent uptick is the exact same effort at getting those bot accounts Twitter deleted up and running again. OR, they may just be new Russian bots, not recycled versions?

[LudwigPastorius]

16. President Trumpski is number один with Putin's troll army!

[-Steph-]

17. It should say infamous instead of famous.

in·fa·mous
ˈinfəməs/Submit
adjective
well known for some bad quality or deed.
wicked; abominable.

[KPN]

19. Kick!

[bathroommonkey76]

21. I posted this on Twitter in Aug 2016

From Death & Taxes:

Link to tweet

I have other tweets about his fake followers that were posted during the GOP primary- it's good to see Newsweek is catching up. lol

[dalton99a]

28. +1

[kstewart33]

47. The story was published in May 2017, but it surprised me.

So I thought it was worth posting.

[bathroommonkey76]

48. Oh, I'm not knocking you

People need to know how much of a fraud this orange shitstain ruining our country is.

[kstewart33]

49. You bet.

Every day brings a new outrage.

[oasis]

22. Trump has created a most ugly history for himself. Years from now, even

family members will attempt to downplay their relation ship with him. Twitter following, fake and otherwise, will dwindle down considerably.

[Turbineguy]

24. Half are real?

That's still pretty impressive. So 16 million of his voters are clever enough to operate a twitter account.

[bathroommonkey76]

26. I follow him just to read his crazy tweets.

Not all of his "real" followers are supporters of the orange menace.

[Turbineguy]

36. Sorry, I forgot that!

"We watch Fox News, so you don't have to!"

[lpbk2713]

27. Just like his pre-election political rallies.

You'd see the same faces standing behind him at each stop.

[JohnnyRingo]

30. ...and the other half are news agencies.

I wonder how many of his aging Tea Party supporters have any kind of Twitter account. It's just not something most people of that age normally do.

[TomVilmer]

31. Partly a false story. Very many ARE fake...

... and that is an old story actually:
17,828,966 Fake - 23,441,789 Real Followers:
https://www.twitteraudit.com/realdonaldtrump
- but rumors of a sudden surge in followers are greatly exaggerated:
https://www.snopes.com/trump-new-bot-followers/

I have a similar problem with a closed group at a Facebook account. Too many moderators have given access to anybody asking, so now at least 4.000 out of 6.000 in the group are useless, since they are all some kind of bots.

[grantcart]

32. I wonder if Carolin Gallego follows his tweets.

[Orsino]

35. Not nearly as fake as the man they follow. n/t

[MrScorpio]

37. I just audited my Twitter account and my followership is 97% real

Which makes me realer than Cheetolini

https://www.twitteraudit.com/Mr_Scorpio

[niyad]

42. well, WE certainly know that you are real!!

[SleeplessinSoCal]

40. Probably learned padding in a Business School lesson. n/t

[niyad]

41. I'm pretty sure the "real" followers are fake human beings, following a fake human being.

[Towlie]

45. And don't forget that following people doesn't mean you like them.

Since a lot of the breaking news is about stupid and/or offensive Trump tweets, how better to get that news quickly than to follow him?

[snort]

44. So the next time clownface von fuckstick goes on a tweeting spree

get out your calculator divide by 2 and take heart, the half who aren't phony are morans.

[dpd3672]

50. I've never tweeted, and I don't have a profile picture.

I just joined Twitter to follow a few people I find entertaining...Anna Kendrick, Ryan Reynolds. I think Twitter is more popular with a younger crowd (I'm in my 40s). Most people my age that have Twitter accounts are more "passive" than "active." Us old farts are more into Facebook.

At least that's my limited experience.

[rurallib]

51. the rest are stoopid

[lagomorph777]

52. Turns out there are not actually 15 million John Barrons in the whole country.

That kinda raised a red flag...

[VOX]

55. On Twitter, all one has to do is look at Dump's re-tweet count rolling like a gas-station pump...

to know that bots are re-tweeting the Orange One's tweets in massive numbers every second.

That whole goddamn Trump-Twitter-thing is a total pain in the ass.

[ThoughtCriminal]

56. Most of the other 50% would be better off

if they were also fake.

The reality of going through life that stupid has to be hard.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

57. Correction.

Most infamous person on the planet.