Over 42% of Musk’s 153 million X followers fake, inactive

San Francisco: Around 42 percent of X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk’s 153 million followers on his X account are found to be fake, new, or inactive accounts, according to recent reports.

Of the 153,209,283 X accounts following Musk, over 65.3 million users, have zero followers on their own account, as per the data collected by third-party researcher Travis Brown.

The average number of followers for all 153 million accounts following Musk is just around 187.

According to the data, only 453,000 Musk followers, or 0.3 percent subscribe to X Premium.

Over 72 percent, or nearly 112 million, of these users following Musk have less than 10 followers on their account, the report revealed.

A lot of Musk's followers have traits that would lead people to ascertain that they are not actually using the site. When it comes to content creation, more than 62.5 million Musk followers have zero tweets, it noted.

“More than 100 million Musk followers have less than 10 tweets posted to their account,” according to the data.

Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion on October 27, 2022. Out of all of the tech billionaire’s current followers, more than 25 percent, or 38.9 million, were created on or after that date.

The median number of followers for all 153 million accounts following Musk is just one (1) single follower.

“All of the above data points could signal fake accounts, describe users who are inactive, or even ‘lurkers’, users who exclusively consume content. It's likely a combination of all three,” the report said.

Around 25 percent of all of Musk's followers, or more than 38 million, use the default profile image that X provides for new accounts, and more than 40 percent of Musk's followers, or just under 50 million, have 4 or more numbers in their @ handle on X.

With inputs from IANS