Mitt Romney Gets Busted Buying Twitter Followers....lol

[graywarrior]

http://www.politicususa.com/mitt-romney-busted-buying-twitter-followers.html

[Kalidurga]

1. Well, how else is he going to get people to follow him? NT

[zbdent]

20. well, one way to get people to follow him is

to change parties to Democratic, and announce that he's going to tell you the truth.

Instantly, the "liberally-biased media" will be on his ass every moment of his life, and parsing every word he says, checking it for any possible reason why it might be construed as slightly inaccurate.

[enough]

2. How do you "buy" Twitter followers? (nt)

[think]

4. http://intertwitter.com/

http://intertwitter.com/



There are many other sources too. Just Google "buy Twitter followers"

[barbtries]

7. thank you

i responded before reading the rest of the thread.

[sabrina 1]

13. Interesting. I never heard of that before.

How sad though, at least the followers I have were not bought and paid for

[tuhindo82]

60. Spam deleted by fishwax (MIR Team)

[speedoo]

5. Easy.

Just send out emails to registered rethugs, offering some incentibe to new followers.. Arrange the source of the emails to provide deniability, if exposed.

[think]

3. Marvelous Mittens. Not only is he a pathological liar he's a fraud too! /nt

[barbtries]

6. the story doesn't explain

how followers are bought?

[think]

8. Google "buy Twitter followers" . There are many sources /nt

[barbtries]

16. thank you

that is wild.
i don't really know how to use twitter but i regularly get emails telling me that people i don't know are now following me. i assume it's because they want me to follow them back, but i just delete the emails.

[think]

18. You're welcome.

Yes, those people are probably just trying to grow their numbers unless you are posting interesting tweets so they want to follow you, or your user handle is confusingly similar to another user they are looking for.

[sussie]

59. Spam deleted by UrbScotty (MIR Team)

[BlueToTheBone]

11. there's a whole industry set up

for people to buy fb friends and twitter followers; something like $.50 or $1.00 per...The way facebook and twitter work for business is that you have to have lots of friends to show up on google. It is a pathetic system and Rmoney is pathetic for having to use it...sort of a word whore john as it were.

[barbtries]

15. thank you

i had no idea.

[BlueToTheBone]

39. me either, until

I had to make my business facebook have friends (now likes). Would you believe that facebook has created an industry that really means nothing, but you have to do it to rank on search engines? It's really just a friends and family sort of site that got out of control. Sort of like Pinterest...loved the site and now it's a job. sigh.

[Rmoney]

9. This is simply untrue. I have plenty of followers, I don't have to buy anything!

In fact, after walking our Irish Setter out of that packed dog park the other morning, I had many, many followers.

However, I was a bit surprised that the little buggers recognized the quality of my high class shoes.

[Zalatix]

50. LOL!!! Welcome to DU.

May your stay be long and your Romney parodies hilarious.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

10. Pathetic. n/t

[flamingdem]

12. More fakery from Willard

I hope his handlers really are this clueless

[Tarheel_Dem]

14. Why else would anyone follow Mitt?

[graywarrior]

19. It's so pathetic that he has to buy his friends

[Spitfire of ATJ]

24. For his wallet?

[Berlum]

17. This is sooooo Republican

Ptooooey.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

25. I know. When I saw this

I thought of this:

[img][/img]

[graywarrior]

30. Exactly

All dinks need to buy friends.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

34. That was fake too.

http://marc.perkel.com/archives/000146.html

[graywarrior]

35. No it's not! He's a real turkey!

[Quantess]

22. I will rec this just for the amazing Lumpus Cat in your signature line.

Bupkus Cat? Lumpia Cat? Loquat Cat? Anyway, that is the coolest looking animal, even though I can't remember the name.

[graywarrior]

23. Officially it is called a Pallas cat

[Quantess]

40. Thank you. Also, a Manul.

I knew the was an /u/ and a /l/ in there. Or ending with /s/
Anyway, that is David Gilmour's power animal.

[graywarrior]

41. Yes, also a Manul

[Spitfire of ATJ]

27. Then there's the wide screen edition.....

[IMG][/IMG]

[graywarrior]

28. Yikes!

[Quantess]

37. Looks almost like the aging David Gilmour.

[Major Hogwash]

26. Isn't Romney's buying of Twitter followers against his religion?

Sort of like him paying for prostitutes.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

29. "bearing false Mittness"

[graywarrior]

33. Being a Mittiot.

[TalkingDog]

43. Nice.

n/t

[KurtNYC]

57. DUzy candidate.

[Incitatus]

32. As long he tithes, his cult will give him a pass. nt

[Ms. Toad]

31. I get the dramatic change in number of new followers each day-

But the article doesn't even attempt to make a rational argument for why this means he is buying followers. He may well be, but there is no substance to the article to support its headline that he is busted buying followers. All it credibly busts him for is an unlikely surge in followers on an unlikely day.

[think]

44. Please see this from Daily Kos posted yesterday:

Are mitt romney's Twitter Followers Bought, Paid For, and Fake, Just Like Him?

Over at Reddit, luxvi posted that mitt romney has been buying twitter followers.

~snip~

Notice they have no tweets and follow the same few "people?"

There are some profiles with tweets -- some of which make no sense and/or are in other languages. I'd put them up here, but I'm kind of burned out on photobucket now. They're easy to find if you want. Just click through dick romney's "followers."

Recently there were a few blurbs about how romney is losing the twitter race. However, neither mentions that the vast majority of mitt romney's twitter followers appear to be bought. Kudos to luxvi for digging a little deeper.

It's possible that these additional "followers" are being generated by hackers, but I wouldn't put it past the romney campaign to buy them, or even hack them. After all, romney is the guy who flew his own supporters in to the NAACP convention for his speech.....

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/21/1112390/-mitt-romney-s-Twitter-Followers-are-Bought-Paid-For-and-Fake-Just-Like-Him

You can double check for yourself. But if you have a surge in followers who are basically "empty shells" meaning they have no Tweets of their own and follow the same unrelated people tweeting there is a very high probability that those followers were bought and paid for.

[Ms. Toad]

45. There is a difference between it being a reasonalbe (and even likely) explanation -

and being busted, which implies some level of proof.

I have seen reasonable explanations (although not in the article which claims he was busted), but nothing even coming close to proof. Even the article you linked to is at the level of "wouldn't put it past."

I am not disputing that it is a reasonable explanation - but when an article claims he was busted, that requires more than just hypothetical musings about a reasonable explanation - or anyone authoring (or citing that article as the truth) just looks extremely careless with the facts.

[think]

46. This is true. And another article suggest even if they were bought

it may have been a 3rd party like a super PAC buying them on his behalf without his knowledge.

So ya, the person writing the story should have either thrown it out as being highly hypothetically possible or gone the extra mile and produced some concrete evidence before making such a declarative statement.


But we've probably not heard the last of this and it would not surprise me if there are paid followers for Rmoney that signed up that day. For Rmoney's sake he best hope it was a third party rather than his own campaign if they do find a source to prove that followers were bought and paid for.

[progressivebydesign]

51. does anyone actually believe that Super Pacs have no connection with the campaign? n/t

[think]

55. No. But it does give the candidate "plausible deniability" which unfortunately

insulates the candidate according to current laws and rulings.

I love the Colbert Super PAC episodes with Steve, Jon, and Trevor Potter regarding this:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-17-2012/colbert-super-pac---not-coordinating-with-stephen-colbert

Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart are awesome. I've learned a great deal from those two "clowns"

[Ms. Toad]

54. I look forward to hearing the results of the digging I am confident will be done. n/t

[progressivebydesign]

52. In the primaries it was found that only 26% of his followers were actual people.

I have this feeling that NOTHING about Romney is real. He is a total fabrication put forth by the billionaires. He could be the scariest candidate we've seen before... even worse than Bush.

[Ms. Toad]

53. My personal jury is out as to whether he will be scarier than Bush.

Bush was not easily influenced, and could be reliably counted on to do the wrong thing even if it was politically unpopular.

Romney, on the other hand, is completely responsive to the political winds associated with whoever he thinks can get him elected. In the general election, that would be more moderate independent voters. So that means he might be more moderate if he thinks his election (or re-election) depends on it.

So - predictable (and consistently far right wing) or unpredictable (and potentially mixed on the right end of the spectrum). I don't know yet.

But, as to phony - including his twitter followers - absolutely.

[NBachers]

36. Then all these new vapor followers can become vapor republican voters and elect Rmoney president

[graywarrior]

38. That's the only way he can win!

[randome]

42. Gingrich did the same thing.

[progressivebydesign]

47. Check out the #morefakemitt hashtag today!!

Many people are saying that they checked his followers, refreshed and it went up by 10k. SO busted.
They're now posting screenshots of his new followers: http://twitter.com/KatieAnnieOakly/status/226774728789069824/photo/1

all using the same pic, and showing up at the same time. lolz.

[graywarrior]

48. WTF?

[progressivebydesign]

49. Did you know that they also create fake Twitter accounts to look like Dems?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkantrowitz/2012/06/05/romney-campaign-creates-fake-bill-clinton-twitter-handle-tweets-from-it-2/

I'm learning a lot on twitter right now. And you can report them for TOS on twitter right now for buying followers.


Is this like baptizing the dead of other religions???

Is there anything NOT fake or dishonest about Tricky Mitt???

[a kennedy]

56. Will they stop at nothing??

D*mn.

[tanyev]

58. 'Cause everybody knows that the person with the most Twitter followers wins the election.