EXCL Tory grassroots campaign Activate mocked for its thousands of fake Twitter followers
2 min read
Conservative grassroots group Activate has been mocked after it emerged thousands of its Twitter followers were fake profiles.
Almost half of the 15,800 followers who had signed up for updates were estimated to be phony accounts – many of which had shared the same ads or promoted paying for fake engagements.
Rival Labour campaign group Momentum said the revelation was “a little bit sad” and branded Activate “an organisation that was looking backwards”.
But Activate denied having paid for followers and suggested its opponents may have done so in a bid to discredit the group.
It is the latest embarrassment for the new unaffiliated Tory campaign organisation, which has had its Twitter account hacked and was forced to apologise after members made deeply offensive comments.
Young activists were caught talking about “gassing chavs” and “shooting peasants” in a WhatsApp group leaked to the Guido Fawkes website.
Its hacked Twitter account has posted a string of anti-Theresa May images and thrown its support behind eccentric backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg to seize the Tory crown.
The @ActivateBritain account has amassed more than 15,800 followers after signing up less than a month ago, but as of last night had hardly tweeted and followed fewer than 50 other accounts.
Many of the followers have no profile pictures or bios and have never tweeted, with others churning out spam tweets – all indicators of paid-for 'bot' accounts.
According to the Twitter Audit tool last night, an estimated 6,468 of its followers were not real – compared with just 3% for the pro-Jeremy Corbyn Momentum campaign.
But the number of fake followers continued to rise rapidly into the early morning, increasing by hundreds every few hours.
A Momentum source told PoliticsHome: "While this is a little bit sad and obviously not the way to build a movement, we're mostly surprised that Activate understand what Twitter bots are.
“With their circa-2000 graphic design and comments about 'gassing chavs', we'd pegged them as an organisation that was backwards looking to say the least."
But a spokesman for Activate said: “Considering we currently have no control over our Twitter account our priorities are currently getting back control of the account and certainly not promoting it.
“I can confirm we have never paid for likes or followers nor do we intend to, it is a bit of a waste of money to be honest.”
The spokesman also suggested the group’s opponents could be “using it as a means to discredit us” and pointed to claims of left wing Twitter bots spamming right-wing posts online.
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