<story><title>Someone bought my Twitter account 10K fake/bot followers</title><url>https://medium.com/@geoffgolberg/when-bots-attack-af7f9f87b612</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zxlk21e</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s very unlikely someone bought them for him to make him look bad. Instead, a lot of the time when fake followers are created they are programmed to look &amp;#x27;normal&amp;#x27; by following other accounts and engaging. Otherwise a single follow target can be a real outlier and easier to triangulate.&lt;p&gt;source: worked in spam for a long time.&lt;p&gt;Also, 10k accounts is like $5-$10 for most &amp;#x27;in the business&amp;#x27;. There are a lot of services that sell for this upwards of $50-$100 though. We&amp;#x27;re not talking about a lot of investment.</text></comment>
<story><title>Someone bought my Twitter account 10K fake/bot followers</title><url>https://medium.com/@geoffgolberg/when-bots-attack-af7f9f87b612</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>blakesterz</author><text>This was way more interesting than I thought it would be.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This is neither a bug nor isolated to my account. Twitter’s entire platform is propped up by misleading&amp;#x2F;inflated follower&amp;#x2F;following counts, which include accounts Twitter themselves have identified as “suspected spam accounts” (and have been identified as such for years).&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I never knew that Twitter did that “suspected spam accounts” accounts thing.&lt;p&gt;Also... he calls this an &amp;quot;attack&amp;quot;, which seems like the wrong word to use somehow. They bots don&amp;#x27;t seem to be attacking him, they just follow him. Probably doesn&amp;#x27;t matter much, but I kept waiting for an &amp;quot;attack&amp;quot; to  happen, but then it became obvious they&amp;#x27;re just following him.</text></comment>