Twitter culls fake followers, Democrats hardest hit

Twitter announced it would be culling the platform's fake followers. It makes good business sense to do this, because fake followers on an individual account distort the influence ratings for advertisers, meaning that accounts full of fakes are a money-losing proposition for Twitter's real, paying customers. If an account has fake followers, it looks more influential than it really is. Well, guess what: there is an extraordinarily high number of Democrats, the kind who draw lots of media hype, with puffed up "it" status, loaded with fake followers. I checked with this site called TwitterAudit here. Some of these accounts, as both Twitter and the tech site Scrunch note, actually buy these fake followers to make their Twitter personas (or personae) look more important. By contrast, few Republicans show any such signs of this kind of manipulation.

What does this say about these Democrats' real influence? Or, for that matter, their ethics? Well, take a look at some of the prominent ones. Let's start with one of my favorites, Senator Kamala Harris, a Democratic Party "it" girl if there ever was one, and one with a long record of fakery on other matters, such as falsifying confessions for prosecutors, or this recent phony claim of racism here. Here's what TwitterAudit finds about her account: Forty percent of her followers are fake. Forty percent. Now, it's entirely possible that bots glom onto accounts without permission, adding some fake followers. American Thinker, for example, has 2% fake followers, and no, we didn't buy those. My own personal account has 4% fake followers, and I don't even know how to get rid of them. New York Times reporter Ali Watkins has 5%. These are piddly numbers. As I wrote here in discussing the shadowbanning of Ted Cruz, Cruz had 17% fake followers, a pretty low count compared to Harris, and the New York Times notes that President Trump has a small percentage. Harris, by contrast, has way, way more fake followers – 55% at the time I wrote this and now 40%. Forty percent of Harris's followers are fake, well beyond a margin of error. How'd that happen? Here's Bernie Sanders: Mister Humorless Integrity has 39% fake followers? Funny how that happened. Maybe socialism isn't as popular as he says it is. If he had something to do with this, why else would he need so many fakes? Or the ambitious Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who wants to be president and is willing to say anything to get hold of that nomination. Thirty-eight percent fake followers. Sounds as though she's desperate. How about Mad Maxine Waters, the supposed uber-influencer of the Democratic Party? ...or, well, certainly its loudest member: Twenty-three percent fake followers. Guess that took some work. Loud, indeed. Next up, addled House minority leader Nancy Pelosi: Thirty percent fake followers. Guess those millions of non-crumbs can pay for lots of fake followers, is that it? You'd think someone who's at the head of her party and refusing to step down, despite the obvious need to, would have enough influence to not apparently have to buy fake followers to look important. As Pelosi told Rolling Stone: "But I have great support in my caucus. I'm not worried about that." Then there's President Obama, whom even the New York Times noted lost ten times more fake followers than President Trump did in the Twitter purge: He got 12%, which is not eye-popping in terms of fakes, probably within the normal range, but note that it was updated less than 24 hours ago. The reading may have come after the purge. What's worth looking at is the New York Times report, which noted that he lost 3 million fake followers, compared to President Trump, who lost 340,000 fake followers. There's quite a difference between 3 million fakes and 340,000 fakes – a tenfold difference, actually. How does such a discrepancy happen, even accounting for the differences in total followers as a percentage? On to Michelle Obama: Another forty-percenter, like Harris. The New York Times didn't mention Michelle. Hillary Clinton? Again, appears to be within the normal range of fakes, but note that this one also was updated recently, when the news broke of the Twitter culls, or perhaps after the cull happened. I'd like to see what it was 18 months ago. She always was handy with the Bleachbit. Bill Clinton, by contrast, is more within expectations: Bubba always did know how to fool them. Speaking of integrity, how's the Fake Indian's fake Twitter follower count? More than half of her followers are fake – 53%! This from the woman who claims to be a consumer advocate? The person who stands up for the little guy? More obviously, she's the person who said her ancestry was Native American to get those university posts through the affirmative action slot. Fake Indian, fake Twitter followers – do we see a pattern here? Not all of them do it. It's worth noting that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chuck Schumer, Ben Rhodes, Colin Kahl, Susan Rice, John Brennan, and other generally Democrat "operative" types don't seem to have many fake followers at all. The lefty showbiz Democrats, by contrast, have some spectacular numbers of fake followers – Rachel Maddow, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Bill Maher, Eminem – all clocked in huge numbers of shills. You can check your favorites at the site here. As Forbes noted in this excellent unrelated profile here, it's all an influence game, and vast fortunes, political or otherwise, can be made from it. The fake followers in politics are part of that race. And the vast numbers of Democrats with fake followers suggest that their influence is not only not there, but not going to translate into votes. It's clear to everyone now, with that ongoing Twitter purge.