Clinton questions Trump’s ‘fake’ Twitter followers

by Jacqueline Thomsen - 05/31/17 7:55 PM ET

Hillary Clinton resurrected debunked reports of President Trump’s flood of “fake” followers on Twitter on Wednesday.

“Who is behind driving up Trump’s Twitter followers by the millions? We know they’re bots. Why? I assume there’s a reason for everything. Is it to make him look more popular than he is? Is it to try to influence others on Twitter about what the messaging is?” Clinton asked at a Recode event.

Clinton appeared to tie Trump’s followers to investigations into Russia’s possible ties to the Trump administration, saying the bot creators could be “sitting in Moscow or Macedonia or the White House.”

{mosads}Reports emerged earlier this week that millions of fake accounts followed Trump over the weekend, but Twitter disputed those claims, noting that the accounts that tweeted out the information were not verified and the user provided no evidence for the claim, Business Insider reported.

An account with a high percentage of fake followers does not necessarily mean the account owner bought those followers. Spam and fake accounts are a known issue on Twitter and better-known accounts are more likely to attract fake followers.

Nearly half of the followers of Trump’s personal Twitter account are fake, according to a Newsweek report.

Newsweek plugged Trump’s account, @realDonaldTrump, into Twitter Audit — a service that determines the authenticity of accounts — and found that 51 percent of Trump’s followers are real.

Comparatively, about 79 percent of former President Barack Obama’s Twitter followers are real, according to Newsweek. But Obama’s personal account also has 89.3 million followers, compared with Trump’s 31.1 million. Obama actually has more fake followers overall than the current president even though his percentage is lower.

Social Rank, a social media service, found that more than 900,000 “egg accounts,” or accounts without profile pictures, followed Trump in May alone. They also found that there was a dramatic increase in those accounts since February, with an 8 percent increase in “egg followers.”

Tags Barack Obama Donald Trump Hillary Clinton Hillary Clinton Social media Twitter