Twitter says reports claiming Indian leaders have fake followers are flawed

After reports surfaced that some of the top Indian politicians including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi's Twitter accounts are infested with fake followers, the micro-blogging platform on Wednesday termed such reports as baseless.

A recent "Twitter Audit" report claimed that Modi, Gandhi, BJP President Amit Shah and others lead the list of leaders with fake followers globally.

According to a statement given to IANS, Twitter said the "Twitter Audit" fake follower measurement tool is not the company's product.

"The methodology used by 'Twitter Audit' is deeply flawed and their incorrect information should not be taken seriously," a Twitter spokesperson told IANS.

The media reports are completely incorrect and do not have any source or authentic veracity of the information, the company said.

Twitter Audit is an external tool not affiliated to the micro-blogging website.

It takes a sample of 5,000 Twitter followers and assesses them on the number of tweets, followers, mutual followers and other parameters.

According to its website, "the scoring method is not perfect but it is a good way to tell if someone with lots of followers is likely to have increased their follower count by inorganic, fraudulent, or dishonest means".

According to Twitter Audit, Rahul has the highest percentage of fake Twitter followers at 67%, followed by Shah, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and Modi.

In Modi's case, Twitter Audit claimed 61% of his followers are fake. Modi has 41 million followers.