April 14, 2015

Audit finds lots of fake Hil Clin Twitter fans

Daily Mail, UK - Although Hillary Clinton boasts a robust 3.6 million Twitter followers, not even a vast right-wing conspiracy would be able to interact with 2 million of them. According to two popular online measuring tools, no more than 44 per cent of her Twitter fan base consists of real people who are active in using the social media platform.

And at least 15 per cent – more than 544,000 – are completely fake.

StatusPeople, the oldest publicly available Twitter-auditing tool, reports that 44 per cent of the former secretary of state's followers are 'good'; 15 per cent are 'fake'; and 41 per cent are 'inactive,' meaning that they never tweet or reply to any tweets.

Another Twitter sleuthing website sampled more than 320,000 of Clinton's followers and found that a much larger number of them were 'fake'

Just 4 per cent of President Barack Obama's Twitter followers, by comparison, are considered fake.

The White House worked overtime to purge most of them after a September 2013 report found that more than half of his followers didn't really exist.

Michelle Obama's Twitter audience is 25 per cent fake, according to StatusPeople, along with 21 per cent of Vice President Joe Biden's.

Another tool, TwitterAudit.com, sampled 320,000 of Mrs. Clinton's followers and found that 18 per cent were fake.

The new measurements [follow] news that a large number of her Facebook fans may represent 'likes' that were purchased rather than earned. Clinton boasts two-thirds of a million Facebook 'likes,' but more than 46,000 of them list 'Baghdad' as their hometown

While Clinton was America's top diplomat, her State Department was buying Facebook 'likes,' according to an Associated Press report from last year.

'In 2013, the State Department, which has more than 400,000 likes and was recently most popular in Cairo, said it would stop buying Facebook fans after its inspector general criticized the agency for spending $630,000 to boost the numbers,' the wire service reported.

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