Twitter is inherently flawed and unfair - and "Influencers" are ruining it

Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook are a few of the social media platforms that are frequented by the "Influencers." LinkedIn and Facebook have a more balanced approach than Twitter and Instagram. I am not a user of Instagram. So I will limit my focus to Twitter now.

Twitter is very light-weight. Anyone can join, in several capacities. This lead to companies such as Devumi selling fake followers - followers created with the help of bot applications in a significant amount.

Twitter, knowingly or unknowingly, has created a class hierarchy with its verification program. Any journalist, a public-facing person, an author, or an "influencer" can become verified, proving a significance or importance. All these definitions fall into a million shades of gray. 

Twitter intentionally has kept its platform with minimalist features. For example, you do not even know who unfollows. This is similar to Facebook. However, Facebook unfriend is different as it is two-way. When someone unfriends you, they also lose you. This is not the case for Twitter. You would not believe how many verified Twitter users with blue/white ticks follow you, and later unfollow you once you have followed them back. Many of us have blogged about this before. There are tools such as Fanbase that automates this ill practice, making it even easier.

For example -  see this amazing post by Matt Navarra: Twitter is being spoiled by one type of user. 

Consider a case you receive a follow from two of these Twitter users:

User A with "10 following and 20 followers."

User B with "5,000 following and 1.25 Million followers."

Who would you follow back?

If you are an innocent Twitter user such as the below kid, you will follow back the user B. After all, B has 1.25 Million followers, and he has chosen to follow you first. Such a humble person!

Fig 1. The innocent kid was followed by an "influencer" author with fame and money in his mind.

But you know what? He/she would unfollow you within a period (anywhere between a week, to a few months), once you have followed them back. Of course, they would unfollow you even if you did not follow them back - but that is fairer relatively.

This is more of a numbers game - the same play by the pickup artists (PUA). Follow 1000 users every day. 100 will follow back. Repeat. At some point, you will have anywhere around 10,000 - 1 million followers. Now you can continue your following game. But at the same, keep unfollowing at intervals. As you reach thousands of followers, the naive users will follow you back more when you follow them first. No one really notices that you unfollowed anyway.

Unfortunately, Twitter does not alert the unsuspecting Twitter user when someone unfollows. Of course, there are applications such as Tweepmaps. But not many are aware of it. Even those who are aware of it, do not know the economics behind this numbers game.

Jeff Emmerson, followed me when he had just 5000 followers. He continued his follow-and-unfollow loop to harvest 1.25 million followers, while "following" only a few thousands at any time. In Figure 1, he followed the kid first. The kid followed him back. But as usual, our Jeff Emmerson unfollowed the kid later.

Fig 2. How to become an "Influencer."

Anyone would question me. Why does this matter? Am I looking into a silly thing? Who cares - who follows me and unfollows me? Right? Wrong.

This is a power play and economics. Someone such as Jeff Emmerson who authored a book needs to show that he is indeed an influencer. When he followed me and around 9 of my connections, we followed him back since he looked genuine. But he was just promoting his upcoming book (probably his biography with some fiction. Did not read it). Then he also started to promote other brands. Each such promotional tweets with 1 million followers can be as expensive as 2,000 - 20,000 Euro! This is real money. You are just a number in this pool.

Fig 3. One of the advertisements, among many, for the same brand.

When I politely questioned Jeff Emmerson on this, all he did was just blocking me. Interestingly, I found at least another user having experienced the same!

Fig 4. Blocked by someone claiming to be a "mental health advocate!"

It is plain wrong. Someone claiming to be a mental health champion follows people with interest in mental health. Those posts on Twitter on tags such as #depression #mental #health #adhd #bipolar. Then unfollows them after they follow back. Very helpful, dear verified influencing best-selling author!

Well. To be fair, Jeff is not the only "influencer" that follow this pathetic Twitter loop. I found many. .@JetsetterDiary did the same thing and blocked me when I found this.

CamMi Pham (@cammipham) is another interesting case. She followed me. I followed her back. She unfollowed me in a day or two! I unfollowed her back. She followed me back in a month or so. (It is hard to forget these people with the same profile picture and verification). :) Giving the benefit of doubt, I followed her back. She unfollowed me again within a week or so. I unfollowed her again, confirming that she indeed is a Twitter parasite. Guess what? She followed me again after some time. I did not follow-back. She unfollowed soon after. She did not follow me again yet. :P Interestingly, the Twitter community has indeed noticed her tactics - and a hashtag #Cammispam has appeared to call her out on this shady practice.

Fig 5. CamMi Pham, the one who spams you with frequent follow-unfollow

As you see above, I am not the only one spammed by CamMi Pham's frequent follow-and-unfollow loops. :D

Fig 6. Some replies to CamMiPham

As you can see above in the replies, you can see some identifying her tactics of "bait and switch" or "follow to unfollow." However, Twitter hides these negative replies under "More replies" tag where they show up only if you click, once the profile owner (i.e., CamMiPham) hides them. So this works in favor of the owner of the profile.

Some other individuals following this shady practice are listed below. There are many. I did not trace everyone:

@chris_meares,

@TheFinalGallery,

@NadiaShapiro,

@johnhall

@Polycor is not really an "influencer" per se. but a company with the same shady practice.

Twitter is taking notice of fake accounts and trying to shut them down. However, it does not seem to take any action against those who use the bots or manual malpractices to increase their follower count unethically. Even Twitter accounts such as Amitabh Bachchan, the most popular Bollywood actor, care about their follower count! :D

Fig 7. The Bollywood Veteran is not so happy about the loss of followers.

I asked myself, why would someone need to unfollow. Why can't they just follow people and keep following those accounts? At least, keep following the accounts that followed you back. Isn't that more ethical? After all, they did not know you before YOU followed them first. I found the answer from CamMi Pham's promotional webinar material.

Fig 8. The secret sauce of becoming an "influencer."

"Twitter followers:  963K.  Instagram followers:  66.5K.  That merely touches the iceberg of CamMI Pham’s global fan base.  How did she do it?  Join us Wednesday, February 7 from 11:00 a.m. Central time until 12:00 p.m. (noon) Central Time and listen to CamMI talk about “Dare to Be Bold!"

This is her business. She lives out of this. It is essential to show that she has a million followers - as in an idol.
Madonna has 2 million followers when she follows less than 50 accounts. Everyone knows and adores Madonna. But is that the case with these unknown "influencers"? These unknown influencers also want to be Madonna. So they must unfollow, even those accounts they followed first. It is also like the restaurants in the touristic area. It is a known scam. In some places, they populate the shop with their friends to look popular. Once you look popular, more crowd will follow. "Fake it till you make it," they say.

Regardless of several complaints, Twitter does not seem to improve at all. Just the way fake reviews ruin websites such as TripAdvisor, these influencers continue to ruin Twitter for everyone. I might consider leaving Twitter. But it still remains as the ideal platform to complain about a company or a politician. So for now, we have to live with Twitter, though it sucks. I am of course tracking these "influencers" in Twitter itself.

I am going to tag every "influencer" that follows me, and unfollows me within a week after I followed them back, into this thread. ;)

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) August 8, 2017

In summary, next time if a "popular" user follows you out of nowhere, remember that they are just adding you to their affiliate marketing pool. No need to follow them back unless you know them already, or if you think their tweets are valuable to you.