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Please note!
This fact brief was originally published as an experiment to test the concepts behind fact briefs.
Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of useful information in fact briefs like this one, not all of them reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Are third-party estimates of 'fake' Twitter followers reliable?

By Seth Smalley
NO

Twitter advises users to be skeptical of claims about fake followers for well-known users.

Outside researchers in an April study determined that bot-identification software was prone to inaccurately distinguishing between humans and bots. Twitter says commercial tools used to detect bots rely on human analysis of factors such as account name, activity and location. It describes the approach as “extremely limited," since the algorithms are initially subject to human bias.

Tools like Twitter Audit and SparkToro that claim to gauge major accounts' follower-authenticity come to substantially different conclusions regarding the same accounts. Moreover, the "random samples" these tools use aren't random, but a list of an account's 75,000 most recent followers. In the context of an account with millions or tens of millions of followers, some consider the samples insufficient.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.
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