2y ago

Elon Musk's X follower count bloated by millions of new, inactive accounts

mashable.com

We took a close look at Elon Musk's more than 150 million followers on X aka Twitter. What we found is…concerning.

Technology @lemmy.world

L4sBot @lemmy.world

BOT

2y ago

Elon Musk's X follower count bloated by millions of new, inactive accounts

mashable.com /article/elon-musk-x-twitter-follower-data

Enough Musk Spam @lemmy.world

reddig33 @lemmy.world

2y ago

Elon’s fake followers

mashable.com /article/elon-musk-x-twitter-follower-data

News @lemmy.world

stopthatgirl7 @kbin.social

2y ago

Elon Musk's X follower count bloated by millions of new, inactive accounts

mashable.com /article/elon-musk-x-twitter-follower-data

40 comments

Journalists are doing the world a serious disfavor by continuing to wank Elon off by using and reporting on a failed web company.
- Half of the active user base are journalists and think tankers. So small wonder they are more interested than the general public.
He's such a child. A creepy, creepy child.
Is there a way to block content other than community and user yet? I'm getting really sick of hearing about Elon.
- The best bet would be to make a feature request for a mobile client to add word/phrase filtering.
  
  I’d just like to be able to block bot posts
- Sync for Lemmy has keyword filtering:
  
  For other sync users, you can change those settings here
  Settings shortcut: Filters > Keyword filters
- I've just started blocking the user that posts it. Not the best solution, but it's cutting a lot of it out if my feed
This man is incorporating the same tactic that Trump has during his presidency: launch a psychopathic publicity stunt nearly every day, to get as much media coverage as possible. Negative attention is attention too, they don’t care. They just want to be talked about as much as possible and they seem to be doing an excellent job at accomplishing that.
- I call it the crazy girlfriend technique.
- When you follow the money, yes. Users who register'share' the as adrevenue. You need to have a lot of exposure and followers to get the check written. Guess who's getting more money ...
We took a close look at Elon Musk's more than 150 million followers on X aka Twitter. What we found is…concerning.
Is it though?
It's most likely scraper bots.
Twitter has started blocking no-login view of many parts and now every scraper is loging in to collect this data and Elon is either being automatically followed or suggested for new accounts.
Elon forced everyone to follow him, so of course bots would follow him. It's strange to make an article about something that's already widely-known as if it was a discovery or something...
He really likes to acquire things and then turn them into (e)Xes.
Why is this community obsessed with Twitter?
- I think it’s more obsessed with musk. It’s hard to not watch a train wreck as it’s happening and it’s also astounding that people can’t seem to leave Twitter for the better places
- Because whether we like it or not, Twitter is still a major force in the overall internet space. Twitter is still one of the top 10 most used websites around the world, so what they do is news.
  
  And dumb shit Elon does with it has repercussions. Just look at Reddit deciding to charge ridiculous amounts for API use as a way to kill 3rd party apps not long after Twitter did it.
  Although honestly, I just shared this because I cracked the entire fuck up at most of Elon’s followers being bots and inactive users and wanted other folks to point and laugh with me.
- Pure Schadenfreude
that's pretty much the case for all celeb accounts tbqh
I saw this posted to 2 othe communities scrolling down and thought “oh I’d better repost this to ‘technology’!
You beat me again! Lol
- Ya snooze ya lose 🤣( jk, jk)
  
  You’re prolific! (And quick as a bullet lol)
Someone's getting desperate!

40 comments