During the $44 billion Twitter acquisition saga, tech billionaire Elon Musk has gained approximately 6.9 million followers on the platform.
Before the Twitter deal, the Tesla CEO most likely had around 83 million followers. He does, however, have over 89.9 million followers on the microblogging site as of now.
Meanwhile, according to a Time report, Musk’s follower count has been significantly inflated by fake accounts.
Musk has nearly 7% more fake followers than the average 41% of accounts with similar sized followings, according to audience research tool SparkToro.
The auditing tool discovered that accounts on an unusually small number of lists, accounts with no URL or a non-resolving URL in their profile, and accounts with a suspiciously small number of followers were some of the most frequently observed traits of a sample of 2,000 random accounts from the most recent 100,000 accounts that followed Musk by analyzing more than 25 factors correlated with spam, bots, and low-quality accounts.
Twitter recently announced a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Musk for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at nearly $44 billion.
Twitter will become a privately held company after the transaction is completed.
The purchase price is 38% higher than Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1, the last trading day before Musk disclosed his nearly 9% stake in the platform.
