Canadian politicians have many fake Twitter followers, analysis show

Canadians are connecting more than ever with the local, provincial and federal leaders — except for those in Quebec, according to an analysis of their Twitter accounts.

Roughly two-thirds of the accounts that follow Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard are fake, according to Twitter Audit, a third-party app not affiliated with Twitter.

The app uses a number of parameters to determine which users are living, breathing humans, such as the content and frequency of tweets, when a profile was updated and how many followers they have versus how many they are following.

It found just 36 per cent of Coderre’s and 30 per cent of Couillard’s followers are real.

A high percentage of fake followers can be an indicator that a user has artificially inflated their popularity by purchasing followers — a service offered by dozens of websites and spam accounts, though it violates Twitter’s terms of use.

Coderre’s spokesperson told the Montreal Gazette he has never bought followers.

Some of Canada’s other high-profile mayors fared much better: Toronto Mayor John Tory has 72 per cent real followers; Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi 68 per cent; and 58 per cent of ex-mayor Rob Ford’s followers are real.

Many “fake” followers are “bots” (robot, or automated accounts). The developers of Twitter Audit, Montrealers David Caplan and David Gross, also say their app doesn’t filter out users deemed to be inactive — those who created accounts but haven’t tweeted much or in a long while or at all.

Twitter says nearly 40 per cent of Canadian Twitter users don’t tweet, and new users might hold off tweeting while they figure out the site, but it still considers those users active.

Caplan and Gross agree that many users are drawn to the site by the opportunity to follow celebrities or politicians; they sign up but never use their account.

Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau follower count, not unexpectedly, has swelled.

On Monday, Trudeau tweeted: “More than 100K new followers since election night! Thanks Twitter. We’re just getting started.”

A spokesman for Trudeau said that data came from Twitter’s native, or built-in, analytics tool, which is available to the account holder but is not visible to the public.

Olivier Duchesneau said that on Sept. 29 Trudeau’s account had almost 755,000 followers; on Election Day (Oct. 19) nearly 794,000. As of Tuesday afternoon, the follower count was 912,091.

Duchesneau also said Trudeau’s team “never, never, never” buys followers.

According to Twitter Audit, 68 per cent of Trudeau’s followers are real. That holds up well against the scores for some other world leaders: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official account, audited about a year ago, shows 67 per cent real followers out of approximately 296,000. For British Prime Minister David Cameron, 62 per cent are real out of 1.22 million.

Just 45 per cent of Stephen Harper’s 924,335 followers are real.

But one of the lowest ratings of any head of state is U.S. President Barack Obama, who gets a thumbs-down score because only about 24 million of his 65-plus million followers are real – or 37 per cent. But, on the other hand, it’s 24 million.

Meanwhile, Canadians outside Quebec are paying attention to their provincial premiers.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, consistently ranked Canada’s most popular premier, with the highest approval rating year after year, has 74 per cent real followers; Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne 71 per cent; B.C. Premier Christy Clark 62 per cent; and Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley 75 per cent.

And the man ranked Canada’s least popular premier again and again, Manitoba NDP Premier Greg Selinger, only has 7,374 followers, but at least he can say 84 per cent of them are real.