Elon Musk’s X follower count bloated by millions of new, inactive accounts

Elon Musk is by far the most followed user on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which he acquired in October of last year. With more than 153 million followers at the time of publication, Musk’s account @ElonMusk is basically a microcosm of the platform as a whole.

So, who are Musk’s followers in relation to the platform? How active are they? How often do they post? Are they consuming a lot of creator content on X? Do they subscribe to Musk’s subscription plan, X Premium, formerly known as Twitter Blue? Are Musk’s followers real?

Mashable has reviewed new data collected by third-party researcher Travis Brown, who compiled basic account information on all of Musk’s more than 153 million followers via a meticulous process that respected X’s rate limit parameters.

What we found is…concerning.

Who are Elon Musk’s X followers?

The most pressing question for the majority of people is likely whether Musk’s followers are fake. Inactive is the better word to use here as it more aptly describes what the data shows. And a lot of Musk’s followers have traits that would lead people to ascertain that they are not actually using the site.

Of the 153,209,283 X accounts following Musk at the time the data was collected, around 42 percent of Musk’s followers, or more than 65.3 million users, have zero followers on their own account. Just over 72 percent, or nearly 112 million, of these users following Musk have less than 10 followers on their account.

When it comes to content creation on the platform, more than 62.5 million Musk followers have zero tweets. This would include users who have deleted all of their tweets by the time this data was collected over the past few weeks as well as accounts that have never before tweeted. More than 100 million Musk followers have less than 10 tweets posted to their account.

Another very interesting detail from Musk’s follower data is exactly when his followers created their accounts. Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter on October 27, 2022. Out of all of Musk’s current followers, more than 25 percent, or 38.9 million, were created on or after that date. 

The average number of followers for all 153 million accounts following Musk is just around 187. However, Brown tells Mashable that the follower “distributions are so skewed” that the averages aren’t “very meaningful” here.

The median number of followers for all 153 million accounts following Musk is just one (1) single follower.

Are Musk’s followers fake?

All of the above data points could signal fake accounts, describe users who are inactive, or even “lurkers” — users who exclusively consume content. It’s likely a combination of all three. However, there are a few further stats that point more to the former two types of users.

Over the years, many real X users have found there are certain attributes that point to an account most likely being fake or a bot. For example, if an account uses the default avatar or the auto-generated username that usually includes a string of numbers, there’s a good chance you haven’t come across a real, active user. 

Just around 25 percent of all of Musk’s followers, or more than 38 million, use the default profile image that X provides for newly registered accounts. More than 40 percent of Musk’s followers, or just under 50 million, have 4 or more numbers in their @ handle on X.

Furthermore, more than 43.8 million Musk followers follow less than 10 users in total via their X account. Around 13.5 million users only followed one single account, @ElonMusk, at the time the data was collected.

An X Premium (aka Twitter Blue) revelation

One last data point of note is just how many of Musk’s followers subscribe to X Premium, Musk’s $8 per month paid subscription service formerly known as Twitter Blue. Musk has routinely promoted the product from his account, focusing on the premium features that come with it like the verification badge or monetization eligibility. A subscription to X Premium has often been associated with personal support for Musk himself by the platform’s users.

However, according to this latest collection of @ElonMusk follower data, only around 453,000 Musk followers or 0.3 percent subscribe to X Premium. Mashable reported earlier this week that there were around 830,000 X Premium subscribers in total based on another data set compiled by Brown.

Rather than using workarounds, Brown works within X’s boundaries — such as the site’s API — to collect X Premium data, and says he fully respected the platform’s rate limits when collecting X Premium data. This limitation, he explained, led to a delay. Due to these rate limits, Brown’s data does not include the most recent batch of more than 200,000 accounts that followed Musk. In addition, more than 39,000 accounts collected have since self-deactivated. Just under 6,000 Musk followers had been suspended by the platform at the time of publication.

Musk has recently claimed that X now has more than 540 million “monthly users.” If accurate, that means more than 25 percent of accounts on the platform follow Musk. And if those numbers are inflated, it means that even a larger percentage of the entire platform follows Musk. With a huge swath of Musk’s 153 million followers not using the platform or perhaps not real, it seems a good portion of X’s overall user base may not be so active either.