A cursory bit of research anyone can do reveals President Donald trump's Twitter efforts may be the biggest Fake News of all. Trump has a follower problem. You can see who his followers are by going to @realdonaldtrump and clicking on followers. When you do, you are struck by a curious fact. By a ratio of 8 or 9 to one, the president's followers give every sign of having been purchased.
Buy followers
One of the worst forms of spam on Twitter are efforts to lure you into buying thousands of "real" Twitter followers. The price is reasonable but the offer is a scam.
What you get are the types of account Trump has. They have the current Twitter version of the old egg for an avatar, an empty person's head. They are fake.
Blank accounts
If you click on one of these accounts, you come to a blank profile with no bio. A message says this alleged follower has not tweeted yet. You get the same thing on account after account, sometimes from places as unlikely as Mexico. There is no one there. It's a bit like the Wizard of Oz.
Trump now claims over 30 million followers. If the ratio you get now holds, you can assume that the bulk of the president's present twitter account is fake.
Why is this important?
News media report Trump's following as truth. If his account shows 30 million that's what goes into the story.
If it is largely fake, it would be as if his tax returns revealed he was not really a billionaire.
In today's polarized environment, Trump's enemies will believe anything negative. Followers will gravitate to Trump's dominant themes on Twitter, attacks on Obama and attacks on fake news.
Where are they now? The Russian bots that disrupted the 2016 election https://t.co/DY2C9mDU0o pic.twitter.com/zjlaNGv8iz
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) May 29, 2017
What would bother Trump followers most?
Trump followers might be turned off if they knew Trump has been buying followers. They might not like it if his account is substantially fake.
They have not been turned off by evidence of Trump's grabbing proclivities. They have not been bothered by his rolling back of health and environmental protections. But what if there was a more thorough examination of his actual Twitter account?.
AOL Dove
In February AOL News said that Trump had a mere 20 percent of fake followers -- egg avatars. That was more than President Obama or Secretary Clinton. A look today may show that the Trump fake followers have grown by an appreciable margin.
Deeper dive
There have been stories about bots and other irregularities related to Trump's activities on both Twitter and Instagram. But nothing has endangered Trump's reputation as a social media whiz.
Perhaps others will follow the lead and take a deeper dive into the world of nonexistent accounts. If Trump's is even half fake or more than half, as could be the case, even Dorothy might look askance.
