Damn, Musk may have more children than actual followers. https://t.co/uKv2SZY0QS
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) August 19, 2023
“Of the 153,209,283 X accounts following Musk…around 42% of Musk's followers, or more than 65.3 million users, have zero followers… Just over 72%, or nearly 112 million, of these users following Musk have less than 10 followers on their account.” https://t.co/8AByMcfd4k
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) August 18, 2023
… Mashable has reviewed new data collected by third-party researcher Travis Brown, who compiled basic account information on all of Musk’s more than 153 million followers via a meticulous process that respected X’s rate limit parameters…
Of the 153,209,283 X accounts following Musk at the time the data was collected, around 42 percent of Musk’s followers, or more than 65.3 million users, have zero followers on their own account. Just over 72 percent, or nearly 112 million, of these users following Musk have less than 10 followers on their account.
When it comes to content creation on the platform, more than 62.5 million Musk followers have zero tweets. This would include users who have deleted all of their tweets by the time this data was collected over the past few weeks as well as accounts that have never before tweeted. More than 100 million Musk followers have less than 10 tweets posted to their account.
Another very interesting detail from Musk’s follower data is exactly when his followers created their accounts. Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter on October 27, 2022. Out of all of Musk’s current followers, more than 25 percent, or 38.9 million, were created on or after that date…
Are Musk’s followers fake?
All of the above data points could signal fake accounts, describe users who are inactive, or even “lurkers” — users who exclusively consume content. It’s likely a combination of all three. However, there are a few further stats that point more to the former two types of users…An X Premium (aka Twitter Blue) revelation
One last data point of note is just how many of Musk’s followers subscribe to X Premium, Musk’s $8 per month paid subscription service formerly known as Twitter Blue. Musk has routinely promoted the product from his account, focusing on the premium features that come with it like the verification badge or monetization eligibility. A subscription to X Premium has often been associated with personal support for Musk himself by the platform’s users.However, according to this latest collection of @ElonMusk follower data, only around 453,000 Musk followers or 0.3 percent subscribe to X Premium. Mashable reported earlier this week that there were around 830,000 X Premium subscribers in total based on another data set compiled by Brown…
Not a tech expert, but if Musk (or more likely his misfortunate remaining employees) are bulk-buying bot accounts, at least they’re not wasting extra money on active accounts.
To put this is perspective:
Musk could have paid 150m people $8 a month to follow him for an entire year.
And saved $30 billion dollars. https://t.co/XuP31Q3WBw
— Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (@padresj) August 18, 2023
It does probably explain the Friday-news-dump ‘announcement’ that X-Twitter will be disabling the BLOCK feature. From everything I’ve seen, such an action would get X-Twitter kicked off all the most widely-used apps, even if he had the staff to go through with his announcement, which he almost certainly doesn’t. But it *did* serve as a distraction for all the media people who still depend on X-Twitter for their livelihoods, as well as broadcasting His Lordship’s imperial displeasure.
Late Night Open Thread: He Can Buy ‘Followers’, But He Can’t Buy FriendsPost + Comments (41)