Marketing and credibility. It's not about the followers, it's about the metrics. Whether it's Twitter followers, Facebook likes, GitHub stars or Hacker News upv

Marketing and credibility. It's not about the followers, it's about the metrics. Whether it's Twitter followers, Facebook likes, GitHub stars or Hacker News upvotes -- if the metrics matter to someone, there's a market for manipulating them. I'm actually surprised this is news to anyone. Some of my first Twitter followers were blatantly fake (unless vacuous Russian models are really into JavaScript programming all of a sudden) accounts trying to appear legitimate at a glance -- following random people and posting credibly arbitrary nonsense to avoid easy detection when they later follow/like whatever someone paid their owner to.