Elon Musk gains six million followers amid hostile takeover of Twitter

Billionaire Elon Musk, who recently made a deal to buy Twitter, has gained approximately six million followers amid the controversial time. He already had 83 million followers before showing an interest in buying the microblogging platform.

The Tesla CEO who owned 9.2% of Twitter's shares was first announced to be joining the board of Twitter. But later changed his mind and said that he wants to take the platform private. Musk is a speech absolutist who claims to advocate for freedom of speech.

He had stated that one of the first changes he is going to make on Twitter is getting rid of spambots. However, his account might be targeted by bots in particular amid the heated row that led to the Twitter deal.

A report by Time said that Musk's follower count is significantly affected by fake accounts. An audience research tool SparkToro found that he has nearly 7% more fake followers than other similar-sized accounts.

The auditing tool analysed 25 factors correlated with spam, bots, and low-quality accounts to determine the possible number of fake accounts plaguing Elon Musk. Usually, accounts that are on an unusually small number of lists and accounts with no URL or a non-resolving URL are likely to be fake. In some cases, accounts that have a suspiciously small number of followers are also fake.

The SpaceX founder has made a deal with Twitter at nearly $44 billion. Once the transaction is complete, the powerful social media platform will be a privately-held company. The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter's closing stock price on April 1.