David Leibowitz, a political consultant who's helping Felicia Rotellini, the Democratic candidate for Arizona Attorney General, posted a tweet implying that her opponent Mark Brnovich is being followed by thousands of "fake twitter accounts."
Funny because a quick (an inexact) check of Leibowitz's more than 26,000 followers on twitteraudit.com estimates that only about 17 percent of his followers are real.
Here's what @leiboaz wrote:
Then, a smattering of folks from Brnovich's camp responded:
Of course, Brnovich supporters were quick to point out that Leibowitz is the last person who should be talking about padding a Twitter account with fake followers.
Check out @leiboaz's Twitter Audit results:
And Brnovich's results:
And, of course, Rotellini's results:
Also, for those who will check, we'll save you some time:
Twitter Audit explains that it audits a random sample of followers and assigns a score to each based on the "number of tweets, date of the last tweet, and ratio of followers to friends. We use these scores to determine whether any given user is real or fake. Of course, this scoring method is not perfect but it is a good way to tell if someone with lots of followers is likely to have increased their follower count by inorganic, fraudulent, or dishonest means."
Just saying.
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Follow Valley Fever on Twitter at @ValleyFeverPHX. Follow Monica Alonzo on Twitter at @MAD_Blogger.