Half Of Biden’s Twitter Followers Are Fake According To Audit

An audit of President Joe Biden’s Twitter account found that nearly half of his 22.2 million followers are fake.

According to Newsweek, an audit tool provided by SparkToro found that 49.3% of accounts following @POTUS, who officially received the most votes in US history, are “fake followers.”

The analysis was based on several factors, including ‘location issues, default profile images and new users,’ according to the report.

SparkToro defines fake followers as “accounts that are unreachable and will not see the account’s tweets (either because they’re spam, bots, propaganda, etc. or because they’re no longer active on Twitter).”

The software company’s tool also found that Biden’s account has more fake followers than most. –Newsweek

The topic of fake accounts has resurfaced following Elon Musk’s deal to purchase the social media giant for $44 billion.

On Tuesday, Musk said the deal “cannot move forward” until CEO Parag Agrawal publicly proves that 5% or less of Twitter accounts are “fake/spam,” as his offer “was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate.

On Monday, Agrawal posted a lengthy Twitter screed in which he essentially said he couldn’t reveal how many users are actually fake.

“Unfortunately, we don’t believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we can’t share),” to which Musk replied with a poo emoji and asked “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.”

So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022

Shares of Twitter are now trading under its pre-Musk announcement price of $39.31.