Meet @cielahbro, an account with 243K followers that is apparently for sale. Is it actually worth buying? #WednesdayWisdom
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
We're quite frankly unconvinced that more than a tiny amount of @cielahbro's followers are authentic. We'll take a look at four particularly anomalous groups of accounts.
The first group of dodgy @cielahbro followers consists of 11249 accounts created in batches of accounts with names in a variety of languages (or at least alphabets) between October 15th and October 18th, 2014. Almost all have zero tweets and zero likes.
The second group (8631 accounts) is much like the first, but the batches are smaller and there are more of them spread across a wider timespan. A wider variety of alphabets is used as well, and the naming schemes employed are repetitive. #WhyAreSoManyOfThemNamedCharles
The third group of suspicious accounts (~37200 total) following @cielahbro consists of blocks of accounts created 2009-2014 where the names abruptly shift from Latin to Cyrillic in early 2011. These accounts follow many accounts but have almost no followers of their own.
The fourth and final (in this thread, anyway) group of likely inauthentic @cielahbro followers consists of ~44300 accounts that followed @cielahbro during two time periods where @cielahbro was followed by NO new accounts. Those that have tweets look spammy.
(we found this account via further exploration of the follower networks of the accounts in this thread)
Update: the account describe in this thread (ID 379609349, created 2011) appears to have been deleted by its operator, and a different account with far fewer followers (ID 2344592906, created 2014) has been renamed to @cielahbro to replace it.
