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The F1 Drivers With the Most Fake Followers

Photo by Tim Carey on Unsplash
  • Daniil Kvyat, of team Toro Rosso, is the driver with the fakest followers – 62.5% of his 166,000 aren’t genuine.
  • Lewis Hamilton, Grand Prix leader, boasts a more modest 34.3% fake follower count, of his 5.54million followers – he places in seventh worst for numbers of fake followers.
  • Of his 71,200 Twitter followers, British competitor George Russell, has a much smaller fake followers count at 24.6%.
  • The driver with the smallest percentage of fake followers is Alexander Albon – only 23.3% of his 31,900 followers are spam/bots.

Why buy followers?

In November 2018, Instagram cracked down on celebrities and influencers with ingenuine followers. This ‘purge’ reduced significant numbers of fake, inactive, spam, bots, or as often discovered – bought followers.
Users may do so to appear more influential, to harness more media and therefore commercial attention, amongst others. But Instagram isn’t the only social platform faced with this issue.
Twitter has battled the problem of bots and spam accounts for many years. And with the British.

Grand Prix fast approaching (12-14th July), Click4reg.co.uk wanted to discover how many followers of the 20 competing F1 drivers are fake.
Using SparkToro’s Fake Followers Audit Tool, the Twitter handle of each driver was inserted to calculate the average percentage of fake followers.
A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated

Drivers with most fake followers

  1. Daniil Kvyat (62.5%)

  2. Kevin Magnussen (53.3%)

  3. Robert Kubica (48.6%)

  4. Sergio Pérez (40.5%)

  5. Romain Grosjean (40.2%)

  6. Nico Hülkenberg (35.8%)

  7. Lewis Hamilton (34.3%)

  8. Daniel Ricciardo (33.1%)

  9. Carlos Sainz (32.9%)

  10. Max Verstappen (32.1%)

This is probably one of the only pole positions a driver wouldn’t want.
Daniil Kvyat, of team Toro Rosso, finds himself in the top spot – 62.5% of his 166,000 followers are not genuine.
Kevin Magnussen, of team Haas, has the next highest number of fake followers – of his 470,000 followers, 53.3% are fake.

The drivers which make up the remaining top 10 include:
Robert Kubica (48.6%), Sergio Pérez (40.5%), Romain Grosjean (40.2%), Nico Hülkenberg (35.8%), Lewis Hamilton (34.3%), Daniel Ricciardo (33.1%), Carlos Sainz (32.9%) and Max Verstappen (32.1%).
Britain’s homegrown star, Lewis Hamilton, is one of the most successful Formula 1 driver to date. But not only pole position on the track, but he also boasts the most followers on Twitter at 5.54million. And yet, a shocking 34.3% of his followers in fact are not genuine. This places him in the worst 10 F1 drivers.

Drivers with the least fake followers

  1. Alexander Albon (23.3%)

  2. George Russell (24.6%)

  3. Lando Norris (25.8%)

  4. Antonio Giovinazzi (27%)

  5. Lance Stroll (27.7%)

  6. Charles Leclerc (28.4%)

  7. Pierre Gasly (30%)

  8. Valtteri Bottas (31.3%)

Alexander Albon is the most genuine driver in this study – only 23.3% of his 31,900 followers are fake.
In the second place, with 24.6% of fake followers, is British driver George Russell.

And in increasing percentages, the remaining and next best drivers for fake followers include:
Lando Norris (25.8%), Antonio Giovinazzi (27%), Lance Stroll (27.7%), Charles Leclerc (28.4%), Pierre Gasly (30%) and finally Valtteri Bottas (31.3%).
Fellow Brit George Russell scores significantly better than leader Lewis Hamilton, with a fake follower percentage of 24.6% – he places as the second-best in this study.

  • This study aimed to include all 20 drivers competing in Formula 1, however, Kimi Räikkönen and Sebastian Vettel do not own personal Twitter accounts and so have been excluded.
  • Live audits conducted on 05/07/19
  • According to the tool used, ‘fake followers’ are defined as accounts that are unreachable and will not see the account’s tweets (either because they’re spam, bots, propaganda, etc. or because they’re no longer active on Twitter).

Fake Follower Audit methodology

Each audit analyses a sample of 2,000 random accounts that follow {insert Twitter handle}, then looks at 25+ factors correlated with spam/bot/low-quality accounts. None of these, alone, indicate a spam/bot/low-quality account; but, when many factors are present, there’s a strong correlation with low quality. Factors like Display Name, Tweet Language and Over Sharing.

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Written by Hassan Ahmed

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