A statistic put out by Twiplomacy, a digital platform which helps governments and international organisations improve their digital strategy, says that PM Narendra Modi has more fake followers than US President Donald Trump. Twiplomacy, which used TwitterAudit to determine the information, has listed five world leaders and represented their account audit with a tweet saying, "Some of the most followed world leaders and their share of bot followers"
Trump, who has 47.9 million followers, has 37 per cent "fake" followers while PM Modi who boasts of 40.3 million followers has almost double the number of fake followers—60 per cent. Which means that more than half of his followers are not real. While TwitterAudit, which is being used by many to validate their social media presence, claims that 16,191,426 out of Modi's 40,993,053 are authentic, 24,799,527 are shown to be fake. His audit score is a poor 39 per cent.
For Trump, while 35,980,870 out of his 48,939,948 are real, 12,445,604 are fake. But his audit score is a wonderful 74 per cent green.
These numbers become significant as Modi had surfed to victory on a very strong and influential social media wave that swept the 2014 general elections. His popularity ratings have continued to touch the sky even four years after the elections. Not only is he a social media favourite, he is also reported to be amongst the most updated tech geek in India. His love for everything digital has resulted in a digital wave in the country with more and more digital platforms coming into existence.
Meanwhile, @OfficeofRG, which is the official twitter handle of Congress President Rahul Gandhi, is also in the red with 31 per cent audit score and 3,696,460 fake accounts and just 1,715,634 real accounts.
Interestingly, @Pontifex, which is Pope Francis's official Twitter account, also has 59 per cent fake followers. His audit score stands in the safe zone of 52 per cent with 8,756,945 real and 8,051,011 fake accounts.
For comparison, Twiplomacy has also provided the TwitterAudits of pop star Taylor Swift and celebrity Kim Kardashian. Not only do they have more followers, the percentage of their fake followers put the world leaders to shame. @taylorswift13 has just 19 per cent fake followers and @kimkardashian has 44 per cent fake followers.
Twitter Audit uses an algorithm, which factors in number of tweets, date of last tweet and ratios of followers to friends to authenticate an account. It also allows you to find and block fake followers.