Anita Sarkeesian’s Twitter Followers Are 55% Fake, And It’s Getting Worse

anita sarkeesian
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Milo

The problematic shitlords of GamerGate have struck again, exposing a dramatic drop in the quality of cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian’s Twitter following. The quality of Feminist Frequency’s followers now matches her arguments, say internet wags.

GamerGate has been a constant target of Ms. Sarkeesian’s tweets, videos, speaking engagements and fundraising activities since its inception in August 2014. At the same time, the consumer revolt against unethical games press and the incursion of authoritarian SJW politics into gaming has been Anita’s most vociferous critic. Gamers are still aghast at Sarkeesian’s shoddy research methods and cherry-picked examples, as a recent video by Canadian supporter Margaret MacLennan illustrates.

The battle against GamerGate appears to have taken a toll on Sarkeesian’s Twitter following, according to statistics on TwitterAudit.com, a website whose tagline is, “Exposing Twitter fraud since 2012.”

TwitterAudit shows that in May of 2015, Anita had just over 286,000 followers, with a very good ratio of 87 per cent real followers. The current report shows Anita having 430,000 followers, a significant jump, but the quality ratio of 45 per cent is, as she would say, problematic.

She has lost more than 65,000 followers judged real, and picked up more than 200,000 accounts deemed fake. The primary result of this change is that Sarkeesian’s tweets do not have nearly the reach that her follower count would lead an observer to believe. In contrast to Anita, I, who am approaching 100,000 followers, maintain a healthy 85 per cent ratio.

Anita Sarkeesian is not the only high-profile member of the Anti-GamerGate movement to fall afoul of TwitterAudit. Leigh Alexander also ranks below 50 per cent on the site.

TwitterAudit explains their methodology in the “about TwitterAudit” section:

Each audit takes a random sample of 5000 Twitter followers for a user and calculates a score for each follower. This score is based on number of tweets, date of the last tweet, and ratio of followers to friends. We use these scores to determine whether any given user is real or fake. Of course, this 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.

There are most likely multiple reasons for the nosedive Anita’s follower count has taken. Perhaps her dramatically overdue Kickstarter-funded video series is a factor, along with the overall activity of the Feminist Frequency charity. It may involve her ill-fated trip to the United Nations to attempt to censor criticism of feminists on the Internet, or her unwillingness to debate me despite my offer of a $10,000 charitable donation.

Of course it could also be that more people are waking up to what Anita Sarkeesian and Feminist Frequency can teach us about the effects of video games on society. Your own opinions are welcome.

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