Elon Musk would lose about 13.5 million Twitter followers, if he pushes through his plan to get rid of most spam accounts, according to data crunched by CodeClan, a Scottish digital skills academy.
The Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
CEO on Tuesday gave up a legal battle and agreed to pay $44 billion to take over the social-media company. Musk has said he wants less than 5% of Twitter
TWTR,
accounts to be spam.
But Musk’s losses pale in comparison with singer Justin Bieber, who would lose 27.6 million of his 114.2 million followers, according to the data.
Britney Spears would lose the highest percentage of fake followers out of the top 20 with some 48% of her 55.8 million followers being classified as fakes.
See also: Elon Musk says Twitter will eventually be part of ‘X, the everything app’
Former President Barack Obama would lose 19.3 million of his 131.9 million followers, the data shows.
Among other high profile names; Katy Perry has about 23.3 million fakes among her 108.9 million followers, or 21.4% of the total; Rihanna has about 26.5 million fakes, or 24.9% of her 106.5 million followers; Lady Gaga has 10.9 million fakes in her roster of 84.7 million followers, for 12.9% of the total; Kim Kardashian has about 14 million fakes, or 19.4% of her 72.4 million followers, and Ellen DeGeneres has about 24.4 million fakes, equal to 31.5% of her 77.5 million followers.
See now: Elon Musk’s legal battle with Twitter may be over, but his war with the SEC continues
In the world of politics, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has about 17.5 million fakes in his 78.8 million followers, equal to 22.2% of the total.
CNN Breaking News has about 7.7 million fakes, or 12.2% of its 63.1 million followers. Bill Gates has about 14.3 million fakes, or 24.2% of his 58.9 million followers. And NASA has some 14.7 million fakes, or 26.8% of its 57.1 million followers.
Twitter shares were slightly lower premarket, while Tesla was down 1.1%.
Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp.
DWAC,
the special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, buying the company behind former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social social-media company, was slightly higher premarket after falling more than 5% Tuesday in the wake of the Musk/Twitter news.
The SPAC has fallen 67% in the year to date, while the S&P 500
SPX,
has fallen 20%.
