The big business of fake social media followers Apurva Agarwal

But there is a lot that people don't know. For example, why did Musk cancel the Twitter deal? When we talk about this, it turns out that the temperamental Musk cancelled the deal because he had problems with fake Twitter accounts and bots. His desire was to make Twitter's image transparent. Now whether he really wanted to do this, or the only intention was to create a controversy that only he could answer. But the manner in which Twitter has presented itself as a victim is not so easy to digest.

Everyone knows what the Twitter and Musk feud was. Musk wanted to remove the fake accounts, and twitter's intentions were questionable in this regard. According to him, more than half the accounts are fake. At the same time, Twitter claims that only 5% of its active users are fake accounts. Now, if one looks at the comparison here, it is known that there are about 23 crores active Twitter users in the whole world. According to Twitter, only 5% of users are fake. But Twitter's own figures, which came recently, show that they have closed 7 to 100 million fake accounts and bot accounts. This means that Twitter knew from the beginning that more than half of its users were fake. Even after suspending such a large number of accounts, still many fake accounts and bots are actively running. There is no doubt that social media has taken communication to a new height, a new level. Information today is really reaching far and wide. Nowadays, a person's popularity and fame are considered directly proportional to his or her Twitter following. This is the reason why today, politicians, film stars, sportspersons or other celebrities, everyone wants to increase their followers because of which one does not hesitate to buy fake followers. This business has become so big that companies selling fake followers have come into existence, doing their business indiscriminately. A recent report by audience research tool SparkToro claimed that 53% of Musk's Twitter followers are fake. The report says that the list of followers of almost all celebrity accounts includes bots and fake accounts. Similarly, another follower audit revealed that 53.8% of Rahul Gandhi's followers are fake. It was told in this audit that more than half of the followers of American President Joe Biden or any influential personalities around the world are fake. In today's modern age, things have crossed boundaries; almost all celebrities are taking the help of such followers to make their mark in the world. From followers, likes, comments, subscribers, retweets, and views are being bought on social media. All this has become a viable business model today.

Recently, a female celebrity from Mumbai complained to the police that a fake account was operating under her name. Starting the investigation, Mumbai Police arrested one of the accused and informed them that he had sold more than 23 crore fake followers till now. The report said that the SIT already detected around 100 companies selling fake social media followers. During the investigation, it was revealed that this company used to provide hundreds of services in different categories. These services were linked to every platform, from Twitter to Instagram. This company called Followers Cart used to provide fake subscriber likes, comments, views, retweets, and followers to its customers, and in return, they charged fees. The network of this company is widespread not only in India but also in many other countries. In a sense, fake follower business is a global issue. Followers Cart is also used to tamper with the servers of social media platforms. Now with the help of fake followers, some celebrities inflate the number of their followers and then earn crores of rupees in the name of promoting any content, brand or writing something in favour of someone. We have seen such exploits on issues like Kisan Andolan and CAA, and NRC. Actually, this is clearly a big fraud to the public. And the victims of this deception are not just a few but crores of people. Since there are millions of people using Twitter today, all of them have been cheated for a long time. The surprising thing here is that in most cases, these fake followers are not humans but bots. When they follow you, you can't follow them back. Apart from this, ghost followers are also used. These are those social media accounts which are not active for a long time. They are mainly used to increase the number of followers, spread fake news, troll people and spread propaganda.

Twitter recently claimed in its SEC filings (SEC are the regulatory documents that companies and issuers of securities submit to the Securities and Exchange Commission regularly); that they have approximately 229MM mDAUs (Monetizable Daily Active Usage or Users), but their engagement doubled in the number of active twitters in past three months, which points towards an important metric for Twitter. Chahal Foundation founder & Chairman of Procure Net, Gurbaksh Singh Chahal, did some interesting data analysis in this regard and showed that the number of 15-day active twitters also dropped from 70 million to 66 million during this period. Consequently, the active tweeters also dropped. Another important trend which is visible in the findings of Gurbaksh Singh Chahalis that whenever a user enables "promoted" ads, the likes and engagements shoot up. This further confirms a high level of bot accounts being used for advertisement. Twitter knows how many active users it has around the world. Also, how many fake accounts, bots and spam accounts are operating? It also raises a question about reliability.

How can a company suppose to be elite come out in front of everyone and accept that a large number of its users are fake? This game is all about maintaining your brand and marketing even at the cost of users' trust.

(The writer is a renowned lawyer, founding partner of Universal Legal and angel investor. He is an expert on socio-political and economic issues. An alumnus of NLS Bangalore, he also pioneered social projects as the president of Rotary Club of Mumbai, Nariman Point)