At least half of President Joe Biden’s 22.2 million Twitter followers are fake, according to a new audit carried out for the social media giant by SparkToro, reported Newsweek.
Using a tool created by the software company that distinguishes between real accounts and sham ones - known as “spambots” or “bots” - the audit claims to have discovered that 49.3 percent of the Democrat president’s followers are “fake.” Furthermore, the company's tool found that the Twitter account of the US president has more fake followers than most.
SparkToro’s tool defined “fake followers” as “accounts that are unreachable and will not see the account’s tweets (either because they’re spam, bots, propaganda or because they’re no longer active on Twitter).”
After The Future Fund managing partner and investment adviser Gary Black shared the outlet’s article on the audit's findings and tagged Elon Musk, the South African-born tech billionaire responded by writing "interesting".
He followed up by tweeting that it would be “like 10 times more than 5 percent".
The revelation comes as Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, who is at present attempting to complete his multi-billion-dollar deal to buy Twitter, has expressed concern over the growing number of fake accounts.
Musk believes that 20 percent of all Twitter accounts are fake, vowing to put his takeover of the social media platform “on hold” until the issue is resolved.
“My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s chief executive publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does,” said Musk in a recent tweet.
The SpaceX founder and Tesla boss was apparently referring to the platform’s chief executive officer Parag Agrawal’s claim that their internal estimates suggest the number of spam accounts on Twitter was less than five percent "for the past four quarters".