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Turns Out 4,621 Twitter Accounts Supporting Andrew Tate Are Just Fake Bots

Turns Out 4,621 Twitter Accounts Supporting Andrew Tate Are Just Fake Bots

If you search Andrew Tate’s name on social media, you’ll find an astonishing amount of support for the recently arrested misogynistic social media influencer. But it turns out, a big portion of that support is from fake bot accounts.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate reported that it found 4,621 fake Twitter accounts created in support of Tate. The bot accounts have tweeted 15,202 times promoting Tate, who is currently in pretrial detention in Romania.

Tate, his brother and two women were arrested for connections to an organized crime ring, rape and human trafficking allegations. In the following weeks, it appeared as if support for Tate skyrocketed, thanks to the bots. The accounts mass tweeted using hashtags “#freetopG,” “#freetate,” “#freeandrewtate,” or “#freetates.”

The CCDH was able to identify accounts as “fake” if they had 10 or fewer followers and were created within the last three months. Additionally, most usernames for the accounts referenced words Tate often uses, such as “cobra,” “Top G” and “Neo.”

Unfortunately this isn’t to say that Tate doesn’t have very real and very vocal followers.

However, the CCDH’s findings are an important reminder that you can’t always believe what you see on the Internet. Numerous studies have found that fake news spreads faster than true news thanks to bot accounts. Misinformation is a major problem, and part of it is determining perception from reality.

But it’s not just up to users to weed out fact from fiction; social media corporations have a responsibility, too.

“If Elon Musk is serious about dealing with fake accounts, bots, and inauthentic behaviour then Twitter must act on Andrew Tate’s network of fake accounts manipulating Twitter’s algorithm,” said Imran Ahmed, the CEO of CCDH.

© 2023 RELEVANT Media Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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