by Gina Smith with Skimbo Jones
aNewDomain — Last week, news broke over at the Daily Dot about Donald Trump’s Twitter following. Using Twitter Audit and other tools, they showed that Donald Trump’s @RealDonaldTrump following on Twitter was more than half fake.
That is to say, 19.9 million of the accounts that follow him are either inactive or they have only a handful of followers. Some may exist solely to retweet Trump, according to some analysts.
But that analysis failed to look at Twitter audit numbers as applied to Hillary Clinton’s @HillaryClinton and Bernie Sanders’ @SenSanders accounts, though. As you can see from the image above, just over half of their Twitter followings were real human-powered accounts — at 53 percent and 54 percent, respectively.
Sanders’ personal account had slightly better results, with a 61 percent bonafide following, as did the official @Potus account, with a 86 percent score.
Famed Trump enemy Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) has a lower real follower score than Trump at 47 percent.
As for Sen. Kamala Harris’ (D-Calif) account, it clocks in with a 55 percent genuine following, according to the Twitter audit tool.
Interestingly, the accounts of Trump’s three politically and business-involved older children (Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka) had near identical real following scores, with @EricTrump at 65 percent and @IvankaTrump and @DonaldTrumpJr tying 69 percent, respectively.
Tiffany Trump is the most real of the gang, according to Twitter Audit, at 81 percent.
The @WhiteHouse is at a respectable 95 percent; only (!) 130,000 of its 15.8 million are fake. By comparison, this author, who has never purchased fake followers, scored 97 percent, with 331 of the 13.3K followers on the official @GinaSmith888 account being fake.
This seems as it should, but wait for it: The US Dept. of Defense scores out as one of the fakest Twitter accounts with a 50 percent fake rate.
In Trump’s America, some governmental bodies are faker than others
The United States Dept. of State clocks in at 62 percent real, though its chief, Rex Tillerson, scores at 98 percent real.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (@EPA) is at 56 percent, though its chief, the Oklahahoman climate-science denier Scott Pruitt, (epascottpruitt) scores 94 percent.
But the US Parks Department, an agency that’s been a nature-protecting needle in Trump’s side since he took office in January, isn’t the subject of fake account adoration. The @NatlParkService account comes in at 93 percent.
The US Dept of Homeland Security did just a bit better than that, at 71 percent.
Government agencies, too, either paid for or in ended up with big hordes of fake followings too. The US Department of Energy was 68 percent real.
The US Dept of Homeland Security did just a bit better than that, at 71
That’s entertainment
Having bought fake Twitter followings can seriously discredit an account for all the obvious reasons. But given Trump’s reality TV background, it might strike him as the normal thing to do.
Here’s Justin Bieber.
Now look at these celebs fake and real Twitter following percentages, alongside some high profile political accounts referenced above.
Here are some other Twitter accounts we ran a Twitter audit on. To run your own, check out Twitter Audit and other tools here.
For aNewDomain, I’m Gina Smith.
Additional reporting by Skimbo Jones.
Watch for our forthcoming analysis of Trump and other politicians’ troll spotting tool, Make Adverbs Great Again .
Cover image: Gina Smith for aNewDomain, using TwitterAudit data. All Rights Reserved.
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