Justin Bieber may no longer carry the title "King of Twitter," after a recent study revealed that half of his social media followers are not real.

A report published by social media statistics company Socialbakers noted that an estimated 16.7 million of Bieber's 37 million Twitter fan base was composed of fake or empty accounts, with another 2.6 million being inactive. In other words, almost half of Bieber's following (45 percent) is not legitimate, according to the report.

The research placed the 19-year-old Boyfriend singer in second place under Lady Gaga in rankings of highest number of Twitter followers. Only earlier this year, Bieber overtook the Bad Romance singer, though SocialBakers' new research overturns the decision.

The report classified followers as either "good", "fake" or "inactive" by picking out those accounts that had fewer than a certain number of followers and who themselves followed a low number of users.

Socialbakers uses the following criteria in order to define a "fake" or "inactive" follower:

  • The account is following less than 50 people and has less than one follower.
  • They repeat spam phrases like "diet," "make money," and "work from home."
  • Tweets are repeated more than three times.
  • More than 90% of the account's tweets are retweets.
  • More than 90% of tweets are links and the profile has a following: followers ratio of 7: 1 or more. This means the profile is following 7 users while only being followed by 1.
  • The account has never tweeted.

The report also noted that though Lady Gaga is said to have more "good" followers than Bieber, she has over 15 million "fake" or "inactive" fans. Ranking third was Katy Perry - out of her 34.7 million followers, she had 15 million fake ones.

Bieber has 37,355,303 Twitter followers at time of publication.

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