Celebrity Column: Bought by bot, writes Sajid Khan

I’ve completed two years on Twitter. I’m not on Facebook or Instagram or any other social network except Twitter. In two years, I’ve amassed around 200,000 followers (and growing bit by bit, daily). I’m also following seven people and two websites i.e. I’m following only nine. So to get 200,000 followers following only nine isn’t a bad number. But what happened recently shocked me and it will open your eyes too...

Various agencies keep approaching me for shows and events. A few days ago, a team of smart young guys met me for a couple of events, they wanted me to compere. We discussed the details of the show and then they asked me why I have only 200,000 followers on Twitter? I replied that it’s organically a good number. That is when they dropped the bomb! “Why don’t you buy followers like a lot of celebs do?” they asked. I was like, why would celebs want to buy fake accounts of non-existing followers? They replied, “For profiling and ego purposes.” A celeb isn’t a celeb unless he doesn’t have at least 500,000 or more followers. It also makes people believe that one is very popular within the digital community. “Curiously, I asked them to show me some celebs, who have bought fake followers. They opened Twitter and showed me a lot of the so-called Bollywood celebs, who had and keep buying nakli followers from them! At first, I didn’t believe them, but then I realised, there were people (who wouldn’t get recognised by their own neighbours) with 500,000-700,000 followers! How does this fake buying work? They explained with proof...

There is a bot (robot) software, which randomly selects names (mostly foreigners) from huge databases available on the web and makes them followers.

Most of them don’t have a status or DP (display picture) on their Twitter profile, plus their surnames are mixed up. For example, John Mombasa, Margaret Shaikh, Chang Kuzotski and so on. Think about it — why would a John Mombasa (if ever one existed) follow a random unknown South Indian TV producer? Or a Margaret Shaikh follow a sales head of a TV channel and Chang Kowzatski follow a cricketer, who hasn’t played in years? And the highlight is that NONE of the fake followers follow the actual stars like Big B, SRK, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, Sachin Tendulkar or even our own Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It’s only because these stars don’t need to buy fake followers. I went through accounts of not very popular Bollywood people, businessmen, doctors, sportsmen, media-persons and was shocked to see how the bot has bought fake followers for them! The moment you enter the account of a fake follower, you will realise that most of them — from Brazil to Boston — are following the same people! And they have the same retweets!

I said, ‘No, thank you!’ to the agency. My 200,000 genuine followers to me are equivalent to two million! But I’m scared that after this article, the bot might send many fake followers to my account in vengeance!