Mashable confirms at least 42% of Elon Musk 153M followers are fake

42% of Elon Musk’s 153M Twitter followers have 0 followers. 

Most of @ElonMusk’s 153 million followers are reportedly fake. 

42% have 0 followers while 62.5 million have posted 0 tweets. (Via @mashable). 

A significant chunk of Elon Musk’s more than 153 million followers on X appear to be fake, or at the very least inactive on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Mashable just published a detailed analysis of Musk’s followers, based on data collected by third-party researcher Travis Brown.

Musk’s over 153 million followers make up more than a quarter of the 540 million “monthly users” that Musk claimed are now on X as of late July. And, if you question the legitimacy of Musk’s numbers, his followers make up more than half of the “monthly active users” that Twitter said it had in the months before Musk acquired the platform. 

While Twitter already has policies in place intended to combat spam bots, security remains a persistent challenge for the platform. Musk has vowed to solve the problem by authenticating “all real humans” on the site, but hasn’t elaborated on how he plans to accomplish that.

Meanwhile, Musk’s own follower count is significantly boosted by fake accounts. Of Musk’s current 87.9 million followers, SparkToro estimates that roughly 48% are fake—i.e., accounts that are “unreachable and will not see the account’s tweets (either because they’re spam, bots, propaganda, etc. or because they’re no longer active on Twitter).”

While the scope of this report was limited to Musk’s followers, it’s impossible not to use that data to look at the platform as a whole through the lens of Musk’s account. As we previously stated, Musk’s high follower count basically means that Musk’s account is a microcosm of the entire platform.

Spam bots on Twitter are automated accounts that mimic the activity of real people on the site, but are programmed to engage in malicious activity ranging from spreading misinformation to promoting money-making schemes. Musk has specifically called out bots that promote crypto-based scams on Twitter, complaining in a live TED interview on April 14 that “they make the product much worse.”