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  • Fake accounts on Twitter: Ignore or Remove them?

    In the last week, I manually removed ~100 fake follower accounts. First, they were some πŸ”₯ girls. (we understand) Then, some South Korean-looking guys. Now, some African guys. Does anybody experience these fake followers as well? What is your approach? [for me, the quality of the audience and true connections matter, that's why I remove them from my follower counts]

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    Eddie Hsu
    This seems to be a phenomenon that only occurred within this year? I've been away from Twitter for a while, but I don't remember this problem ever happening before.
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    @apolkingg8 This has been happening for several years. I noticed it first back in 2021 when there was a huge buzz around crypto and NFTs.
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    Nick Stein
    How did you remove them?
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    @nick_stein2 When you go to their profiles –> 3 dots button –> There is an option: Remove this follower
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    Debajit Sarkar
    Block them right away. They can clutter your feed with irrelevant or spammy content and they don't contribute to genuine interactions or discussions. Some fake accounts might be used for malicious purposes, such as spreading misinformation about your products or phishing scams
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    Is removing not enough? @dsarkar
    Debajit Sarkar
    @busmark_w_nika Should be. But can Twitter/X ensure that they won't return?
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    Indu Thangamuthu
    Same Same... It's been growing for the past few months πŸ˜– Especially to corporate accounts having these pornographic accounts and gaming fake accounts in followers list... they just make me hate my own account. My account is losing the integrity it's supposed to hold. It's exhausting to remove the accounts and report them. Twitter...I am afraid to continue my business and product accounts, if this is how they are gonna burden me for long time.
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    @indu_thangamuthu Have you tried Threads instead of X?
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    @indu_thangamuthu Me too. Today, I found this: The growth of installs.
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    Indu Thangamuthu
    @busmark_w_nika That's Nice! I have been into Threads for few months recently... all thanks to instagram for their never-ending promotion of Threads in between reals πŸ˜€ Not fancy like Twitter, but they are growing. Guess the fake accounts on 𝕏 are annoying people, and they have started to move to Threads.
    Success.ai
    Success.ai
    Launching soon!
    It is frustrating, but I choose to ignore it and not let it affect me.
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    @hamza_afzal_butt it makes sense the thing is when I started to offer my newsletter sponsorship + tweet shoutout, it can affect the results. I mean... it less trustworthy when you try to give your clients true engaged followers or consumers of the content.
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    I am not alone in this (I know). Posted the same problem on Twitter and people heavily discussed whether to ignore or remove: https://x.com/BusMark_w_Nika/sta...
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    Faisal Ishaque
    This is annoying but I don't pay heed to them and just let them be!
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    @faisal_ishaq1 It is also an option, I am asking because I would normally have like 300 followers this way in the last 2 weeks but those dead profiles only disregard my account + lowering engagement rate.
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    Nathan Covey
    I don't want them taking any more time out of my day so I just ignore them tbh
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    Yvik Ye
    Yes, we have the same situation, but we choose to ignore it.
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    @yvik_ye do you have it on your personal or work profile?
    Nifal Adam
    Fake accounts can be used to spread hate speech or misinformation. Removing them can help protect yourself and others from online abuse.
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    Steffi NicolaΓ―des
    What made you think they were fake follower accounts?
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    Pedro Orlando
    You can use something like owlead.com to remove them in bulk. Most of those accounts are not active, and you can set up a "x" days inactive filter, and remove all.
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    @orlandopedro Hi Pedro! I do not have a personal experience with this tool. Do you have?
    Jack Lipsky
    I think removal is the way to go. In my previous company, the person who held the marketing role before me seemed to have bought these bot followers for our TikTok account. A profile that has over 6,000 followers, but less than 100 views and even fewer likes per post is suspicious to *real* viewers. It's dishonest and decreases the genuine connection businesses look to make with true/potential followers. Makes it look like your business is taking a shortcut in marketing, which makes the customer wonder if you take shortcuts in your service/product as well. While paying for bots is different from the spam-bots that will follow you hundreds at a time without your want - keeping those profiles as followers has the same effect in seeming like you're just trying to boost your follower-count in a cheap, dishonest manner.
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    @jack_lipsky1 Jack, I totally understand and feel the same. Not it is only dishonest but tricky. I do not want to present my base like: yeah, I have numbers but they are only bots :D you know what I mean. D:
    YanXu
    I've never understood the purpose of these accounts, are they meant to advertise to you?
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    @all_appp_games Either that or just some people use it against competition to lower their engagement rate or authority.
    Karen Anderson
    I used to just ignore them, but lately I've been removing the more egregious fake accounts. Too many of them can really pollute your feed and make Twitter a less enjoyable experience IMO. I know it's whack-a-mole, but I still think it's worth doing periodic cleanups. Anyone know of automated tools to help identify likely fakes and bulk remove them? That would make the process way easier.
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    Yue Weiyi
    I really hate those pornographic accounts.
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    Rahul Parmar
    Remove them. Fake accounts can spread misinformation, and spam, and skew engagement metrics. Keeping your Twitter environment authentic and secure is essential.
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    @rahulparmar2405 I have seen that now you can block links in comments (aka do not allow them). That could help too. If you have X premium.
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    Daniela Bavuso
    I remove them and another super annoying thing is when you receive messages from these fakes.. a thousand shades of inappropriateness
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    @daniela_bavuso The best are those who offer your xy profits and followers. Good service don't need such promotions :D
    Daniela Bavuso
    @busmark_w_nika People who know how to make money don't waste time wondering how to make money for others :D
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    Benedicta Anita
    Remove those accounts. they interfere with account health and our accounts can be banned, anyway they can interfere with logarithms
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    @caca_charlotte did you mean algorythm?