A verified @Faith4Hillary Twitter account purporting to be the "Faith and Value Voters for Hillary Clinton 2016" appears to have purchased a large percentage of its 42.6k followers.
The website Twitter Audit determined that more than half of the account's followers were obtained by "inorganic, fraudulent, or dishonest means," and the similar website StatusPeople calculated that only 18 percent of the account's followers were "good."
Per StatusPeople, the rest of the followers were either fake accounts or accounts that are inactive.
Additionally, the account has a comparatively small amount of interaction via retweets and favorites compared to the amount of followers listed, which is indicative that the account is not being followed by real people.
A "fake" Twitter account is an account not run by an actual person or organization and is specifically created to boost a follower count. A variety of websites sell these accounts.
Other celebrities and politicians have faced accusations of artificially pumping up their social media presence. However, as @FaithVoters4Hillary isn't Hillary Clinton's personal account and considering Clinton hasn't officially announced she will even be running in 2016, it's a bit weird that steps are being taken to portray her as a candidate with a sizable "faith and values" fan base.
Recommended
We live in very interesting times.
UPDATE: The plot thickens. On Friday, when I ran the initial audit, the account @Faith4Hillary had 42.6k followers and 806 tweets. As of 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 6, the account has been purged of over 12,000 followers and currently has 30.5k followers and 835 tweets. Observe the screenshots below:
Friday:
Sunday:
Caught ya.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member