We took a look at @realDonaldTrump's last few months' worth of new followers. 14960294 accounts followed his account from December 1st, 2019 through May 24th, 2020. (Suspended accounts and accounts that unfollowed during that timeframe are excluded, obviously.)
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
Trump's account's recent followers are disproportionately new accounts - 8259726 of 14960294 (55.2%) were created in December 2020 or later. There's a large spike in January around the time of the Soleimani assassination, as well as a surge in mid-March through the end of April
Although Trump's account has gained 14960294 followers in the last six months, it hasn't gained 14960294 active ones. Only 4764546 (31.8%) have tweeted more than 20 times and 4394940 (29.3%) have no tweets at all. 3319704 (22.%) have default profile pics.
Unsurprisingly, the account most frequently retweeted by @realDonaldTrump's recent followers is @realDonaldTrump. PM of India @narendramodi, SpaceX/Tesla founder @elonmusk, and Twitter giveaway mavens such as @pulte also turn up prominently.
Based on the most recent tweet from each account that has visible tweets, 43.4% of @realDonaldTrump's recent followers are non-English-language accounts, compared to 18.7% of recent retweeters. Arabic and Hindi in particular are more common among followers than retweeters.
We found reuse of biographies among @realDonaldTrump's latest followers. Although some are common phrases like "nothing is impossible", others are indicators of botnets, such as "해킹 및 디도스 전문가 레드팀입니다. 카톡: ddosred", which we've seen before.
Correction: this should read "December 2019 or later" as December 2020 is in fact still in the future.
