Fake followers are a curse to the very concept of social media – You cannot have emotion-less bots replace the ideas of a human being.
On some level, fake followers are worse than fake news, because they can be exploited and used as a weapon of mass destruction.
Recently, a news shook the social media and political world of India, when it claimed that 60% of all Twitter followers are fake. Congress President Rahul Gandhi was leading this list of fake followers with 69% share.
BJP president Amit Shah, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor were other prominent leaders featured in this list.
Due to the heat generated, Twitter has to come out, and response to the mess.
And as per Twitter, this news is fake.
Twitter: 60% Fake Followers News Is Wrong
As soon as the news about fake followers spread, Twitter was accused of allowing such things to happen. It is the responsibility of the social media platform to ensure that fake followers and bots are not even allowed to operate.
PM Modi has 41 million followers on Twitter.
Twitter distanced themselves from this report and have termed the news as fake.
In fact, Twitter has even said that such news should not be taken ‘seriously’.
In a statement, Twitter said,
“The methodology used by ‘TwitterAudit’ is deeply flawed and their incorrect information should not be taken seriously.”
Twitter has said that TwitterAudit, the site which finds such fake followers is not at all affiliated with them, and they have not developed or using any tool or software to find out fake followers.
How Does Tweet Audit Work?
If we analyse the basic principles of finding out fake followers used by TwitterAudit, we will find several loopholes.
For instance, in order to evaluate fake followers of an account, they compare it against a small database of 5000 users and examine critical factors such as date, time of the last tweet sent, mutual followers and number of tweets.
On a physical examination of these factors, there is no way a person can claim that an account is fake.
But, Is It Possible To Filter Out Fake Profiles?
However, in case Artificial Intelligence is employed, and a finite number of data points are created, them a highly sophisticated software can have some success.
For instance, something that TrustCheckr does.
This Bengaluru based startup has recently raised a funding of Rs 65 lakh from undisclosed investors. They use machine learning, deep learning, AI and highly advanced image processing system to filter out fake profiles.
As per the company, their targeted audience are corporates, startups, HR Departments, which wants to find out how genuine their next hire actually is.
But again, they are working under highly targeted, and focussed user-group, and it is highly unlikely (as of now), that even they can filter out fake profiles among millions of followers.
Do you think that politicians should themselves ensure that no fake followers are following them? How bad is the situation?
Do let us know by commenting right here!