This morning brought the news that municipal party Vision Vancouver‘s Twitter following (along with Mayor Gregor Robertson‘s) had ballooned overnight, and that most of those followers were fake. What should have been a non-story wasn’t, because politics and municipal election in November.
I weighed in, and I hope helped to clear this up a little. Here are my comments, collected in one handy bundle.
Disclosure: I’ve done work in the past for @VisionVancouver and @MayorGregor. So you can bear that in mind for the following tweets.
— Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) September 14, 2014
There's been some buzz about how @VisionVancouver and @MayorGregor suddenly picked up thousands of fake followers overnight. (1/9)
— Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) September 14, 2014
Some of Vision's critics have pounced, saying that means they must have bought those followers. Uh, no. (2/9)
— Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) September 14, 2014
Pranking a political party, politician or anyone else by larding them up with fake followers is stupidly cheap and easy. (3/9)
— Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) September 14, 2014
Want to buy 10k followers? Fork over $20 and any number of gross websites will load them onto the Twitter address of your choice. (4/9)
— Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) September 14, 2014
Thing is, you get what you pay for. Those new followers won't stand up to any scrutiny; they're glaring fakes. (5/9)
— Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) September 14, 2014
So they're useless for a political party. One glance makes it obvious they aren't real. And Twitter deletes those users over time. (6/9)
— Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) September 14, 2014
But for a prankster, it's appealing. Getting caught is extremely unlikely, and you're only out the cost of a few beers. (7/9)
— Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) September 14, 2014
It's dishonest. And you need your opponent's critics to assume the worst. But this being politics in 2014… (8/9)
— Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) September 14, 2014
Finally, I hate the fake follower industry with the heat of a blast furnace. That is all. </rant> (9/9)
— Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) September 14, 2014
It wasn’t that long ago that news media and political opponents alike would run breathless stories about how some pol’s website was just four clicks away from pornography! Fortunately, something like that wouldn’t make headlines these days, because we’re a lot smarter about how the Internet works.
Which means there may be one bright side to this. Today the #vanpoli world got a crash course in the exciting world of fake followers. Maybe it’ll leave us all a lot less prone to using follower counts as any metric of social media influence or success.
