How to Block Your Fake Followers
Millions of Twitter users are in fact fraudulent bots sold to real Twitter users, including many celebrities and media representatives, in order to inflate their statistics and make them more influential. Last week, the New York Times investigated one of the most influential bot sellers and called his famous clients. The Chicago Sun-Times then suspended film critic Richard Roper for a couple of days.
Even if you didn’t buy fake followers, some of them might have followed you. But if you don’t sell your tweets to advertisers or count on followers on your resume, nobody cares. While buying followers is against Twitter’s rules, Twitter hasn’t even punished most users who have bought thousands of followers. (Why would they? Twitter is desperate to keep celebrities on the site.) They definitely won’t punish you for a few random fake followers.
But if you really want to, you can identify and block all your fake TwitterAudit followers . The site will provide you with an approximate number of bots that are tracking you for free. Then, for $ 5-30 (depending on the number of subscribers), they identify each account and allow some or all of them to be blocked. Please note that TwitterAudit may accidentally flag real people as bots. If you block them, they won’t be able to see your tweets. (Blocking them doesn’t tweet them as bots or the like, so don’t worry too much.)
Poynter’s media coverage site points to a few more tools for cleaning your subscriber list and auditing other users’ subscribers. You are a drug addict.