CDA leader Sybrand van Haersma Buma has generated over 24,000 Twitter followers in a short space of time, but a lot of questions are being raised about where they came from.

According to website Joop.nl, 82% of the CDA leader’s Twitter fans are fake – spam accounts made by robots. Van Haersma Buma set up his Twitter account in April 2011 but only sent his first tweet into the world on June 13 this year. He follows 53 people and has sent out 40 plus tweets so far.
A party spokesman told the website the CDA has not bought fake followers for Van Haersma Buma, nor have CDA supporters given him the followers as a present.
Conference
The fake followers may have signed up following the CDA conference at the end of June, during which #CDA and #Buma were trending topics, the spokesman said. ‘They came on an American site and that may explain why we have so many spam followers in such a short space of time,’ the spokesman told Nos television.
Buying Twitter followers is not new, the NRC reports. For example, the website Koop Twitter Followers is offering 10,000 for €99, including a money back guarantee.
And Arnoud Wokke of technology website Tweakers told Nos some people who are new to Twitter do buy followers. ‘It strengthens your position because the more followers you have, the more interesting you are and the more new followers you attract,’ he said.
Last week, US presidential candidate Mitt Romney was accused of buying fake Twitter followers after adding 135,000 over a weekend.
Joop.nl says D66 leader Alexander Pechtold also has a large number of robot followers. They account for around one third of his official fan base of 152,000.
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