I don’t have a ton of Twitter followers, mostly because I don’t put much effort into Twitter. But my measly 8,000ish followers have led me to question the real influence of checkmark Twitter users with millions of followers.
One of the big complaints Elon Musk has had with Twitter is the ratio between active users and fake, bot accounts on the platform. The tech company claims that the estimated number of bots is around 5%, but Musk argues the number may be as high as 20%. From an anecdotal analysis, it would seem that LOADS of users seem to be bots or inactive users. The 5% estimate is laughable to anyone who uses Twitter on a regular basis.
I’ve come across several verified Twitter profiles that have 100,000 or more followers but get less engagement than my dumpy little following. How does this make sense?
Dave Rubin made this exact point by pointing out The New York Times’ Twitter account. The newspaper’s profile has 53 million followers, but rarely gets more than 50 retweets a tweet.
Rubin posed the question to the hopeful future Twitter owner, Elon Musk, and Elon responded saying that he found it weird as well.
The point is that we all need to recognize Twitter, tweets, and Twitter engagement is not the real world. It’s often the case that certain issues go viral on Twitter and turn into national stories when in reality, those issues may not have as much of an influence on society. Media outlets and politicians are often misled by their fake, online level of importance.
The bottom line seems to be this: Be skeptical of everything… But especially issues that become important on Twitter.
