Nearly half of the San Antonio Spurs' Twitter followers are fake, study says

The San Antonio Spurs might have 3.5 million followers on Twitter, but nearly half of them are fake, a recent study alleges.

According to a report by online sports betting site Gambling.com, about 1.4 million, or 41.6% of those following the Silver and Black on Twitter, aren't real people. Instead, those "people" are actually fake followers such as spam bots or inactive users.

Worse, the Spurs have the sixth-highest percentage of fake followers in the NBA. The Los Angeles Lakers took the top spot, with 43.5% of their Twitter followers being fake, followed by the Golden State Warriors and the Chicago Bulls taking the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively.

Spurs officials were unavailable for comment on the analysis.

To compile the data, the report used an online "follower audit tool" that ran diagnostics to discover which followers were fake and which were real. Having fake followers

The Detroit Pistons had the least amount of fake Twitter followers. The study only identified 36.6% of that team's followers as fake accounts.

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