Twitter’s initial attempt to introduce a fee for verifying accounts with blue ticks reportedly resulted in a marked decrease in the number of bots. Yet the ongoing nuisance of fake Twitter accounts is far from abating.
Twitter launched Twitter Blue, a subscription service that costs $8 per month. It was launched with the dual purpose of increasing the platform’s revenue and making it financially unfeasible for bots and fake accounts to operate effectively. Despite these efforts, reports indicate that a significant portion of the followers of the most popular crypto accounts are still rogue.
In a recent study, DappGambl, a crypto platform, conducted an analysis of this. They suspected that there is a connection between the popularity of crypto tokens and the presence of fake followers on Twitter accounts.
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DappGambl investigated the social sentiment associated with crypto accounts and it was discovered that as many as 10% of the followers of the most followed crypto accounts were fake.
Fake Twitter Crypto Followers: Facts and Figures
When examining the official accounts of cryptocurrency tokens and ecosystems, it was found that Shiba Inu had the highest percentage of fake followers. These fake followers amounted to 10.26% or about 80,000 accounts.
Avalanche (AVAX) came second with 8.14% fake followers and Polygon (MATIC) third with 7.58% or about 73,000 fake accounts.
Moreover, dappGambl’s findings revealed that DAI is widely regarded as the most loved and popular coin among Twitter users. On the other hand, XRP is often associated with scams.
Other notable figures are also facing the presence of fake followers on their Twitter accounts. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey reportedly has about 560,000 fake followers, accounting for 8.62% of his total number of followers.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin apparently both have nearly 6.5% of their followers identified as fake.
Musk’s anti-fraud measures fail to crack down on fake accounts
Among celebrities in the crypto industry, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has about 4.76% fake followers on Twitter. Closely followed is Michael Saylor, the co-founder of MicroStrategy, with about 6.16% false followers.
Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, the CEO of Binance, also has a significant presence of fake followers, accounting for about 5.58% of his total number of followers. These stats underline the prevalence of fake followers among celebrities in the crypto space.
Despite Elon Musk’s efforts to combat fake accounts, he is tracked by more than 6.7 million fake accounts, highlighting the persistence of the problem.
Various methods such as examining account details and analyzing followers can be used to identify fake accounts. Most recently, the popular Twitter bot “Explain This Bob” was suspended after Musk called it a scam, highlighting the ongoing challenges in cracking down on fake accounts on the platform.
Featured image of UnSplash, chart from TradingView.com