Of the users following Modi on Twitter, 60% are fake

Earlier today, a February 21 infographic prepared by Alex Kliment, director of Eurasia Group, starting doing the rounds on Twitter. The infographic, as determined by TwitterAudit, reveals that numbers of followers related to the accounts of some of the worlds’ top leaders are fake.

This includes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Donald Trump as well as Pope Francis — the leaders who were ranked among top three of the world’s most-followed leaders on Twitter.

While a 2017 blog on twiplomacy.com had rated Narendra Modi as the third-most followed global leader on Twitter with 30,058, 659 followers, this infographic reveals that Modi has the highest number of fake followers. Of the users following @narendramodi, 60 per cent are fake, the infographic reveals.

And, of those following Pope Francis, 59 per cent are fake while 37 per cent of Trump’s followers are fake. In determining which follower/user account is fake, TwitterAudit factors in the number of tweets from these accounts, date of last tweet and ratios of followers to friends.

Curiously, the revelation of these numbers only caught the attention of social media users now — three weeks after. With that, users including journalists, members of Congress party as well as the official handle of Congress’ Tamil Nadu chapter took on the prime minister.

Twiplomacy, a part of Burson-Marsteller study about digital diplomacy, refers to Twitter being used as a medium by government agencies and officials to engage in diplomacy.