Journalists are throwing digital eggs at the president. More specifically, they’re trying to slam Donald Trump after a new Bloomberg report shows that as many as 28 percent of his Twitter followers keep their profile picture as the default egg logo, the tell-tale sign of a fake account.
But fake followers don’t matter. On Twitter, they’re omnipresent. And for the uninitiated, this isn’t anything new.
Much of Twitter is made up of bots, those mindless computer programs that like, retweet, and follow on command. In fact, according to research from the University of Southern California and Indiana University, altogether 15 percent of Twitter users aren’t real. It’s almost impossible to tweet without attracting these Twitter pests.
Like many reporters, Vox’s Elizabeth Plank left out this context this morning. Rather than explain the phenomenon, she used it to discredit Trump on, of all places, Twitter.
But journalists shouldn’t be quick to throw stones/eggs inside the glass house of the Internet. According to Twitter Audit (a slightly different measure than the one Bloomberg used), more than 7 percent of Plank’s own followers, 5,391 users, are fake. That doesn’t discredit her. It just shows that dodging egg accounts online is impossible.
Trump also has the millions of fake followers, 27 percent of his total following, according to Twitter audit. But as the Bloomberg report even notes, that fake following is likely a result of the fact that he’s one of the site’s most popular and visible users. According to Twitter Audit, top Democratic politicians, or the staffers who run their accounts, also have this problem.
More than one fifth of Hillary Clinton’s followers, 21 percent, aren’t real. Neither are all of President Obama’s. He owes 21 percent of his following to fake accounts. Even Bernie Sanders isn’t immune with 10 percent of his users sporting the egg logo.
It’s not just American politicians who suffer from infestations of fake followers. Plank is a big fan of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Last March, she sat down with the progressive prime minister for a gushing interview about Americans begging to accept them as “refugees from Trump.”
Plank talked politics, feminism, and fatherhood during the viral spot. She didn’t mention Twitter, though, and perhaps for good reason. Trudeau might be the media’s darling but he owes 32 percent of his online following to fake accounts.
What’s all this mean? Prominent politicians on both sides of the aisle and across the world are followed by fake accounts. It’s not their fault and it doesn’t discredit them. Any journalist like Plank should take notice. Otherwise they’ll be left with egg on their face.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
