You’ve probably been there. Posting daily. Testing different hashtags. Even engaging with replies like a good netizen. But nothing moves. Follower count stays flat. Or worse, engagement keeps dipping even as your audience grows. It doesn’t make sense.
Here’s what most people don’t realize: having a bunch of fake or inactive followers can actually hurt your account. Not just clutter your numbers, actively drag you down.
Twitter’s algorithm notices when you post something and hardly anyone interacts. If half your followers are ghosts or bots, that’s exactly what happens. And the algorithm stops showing your stuff to real people. It sees your account as “meh,” even when your content is solid.
So if you’ve ever thought, “Why does it feel like I’m shadowbanned?” or “I’m doing everything right but it’s just not catching?”, this might be why.
Fake Followers Are a Bigger Problem Than You Think
Let’s say you’ve got 5,000 followers.
But only 500 of them are real people who actually use the platform.
That means every time you post, 90% of your potential audience is dead weight.
Bots (or bot-like people) don’t like, retweet, reply, or share.
And here’s where it gets worse: because your engagement rate tanks, Twitter doesn’t show your tweets in the Explore tab.
It becomes a quiet echo chamber. Even your real followers stop seeing your posts.
Now imagine you’re pitching a brand collab, or trying to get featured. Someone looks you up. Big number on the surface, but nothing in the replies, no recent engagement.
They’ll cancel because you look inflated. That trust is gone before you even get a shot.
So What Can You Actually Do About It?
This is why TwitterAudit, now fully integrated into Fedica, is used by big brands to small creators. It’s not some vanity scan. It’s an actual cleanup tool.
You plug in your account, and in seconds it pulls up a full breakdown of who’s following you. You’ll see which accounts are inactive, which look like bots, and which are solid, real humans who might actually care what you’re saying.
From there, you don’t just sit on that info. You can filter them, sort them, and clean house. Think of it like finally decluttering your digital room. The more you trim the fake weight, the easier it is for your real message to land.
Who Cares About Checking Fake Followers?
People often think more followers = better results.
But if your audience is bloated with junk, it’s like shouting into a crowd of mannequins.
Once you clean it up your tweets can start landing again. Replies come in from real people. Brands take you more seriously. And you stop wondering if the platform is broken.
It’s not broken. It just works better when your following is made up of real people who actually care.
And that also means checking if people are actually active on X, using the platform:
It’s nice because you can search someone’s twitter followers too the same way you can for your own if you’re looking to collaborate with others.
How to Start Fixing It Right Now
If you’re even a little suspicious that fake followers might be holding you back, you’re probably right. The fastest move you can make is to run a quick audit using TwitterAudit from Fedica.
It takes two minutes. It gives you a clear map of what’s hurting your account. And it gives you actual options to clean it up by visiting X to block the bad ones.
But blocking a user makes them unfollow you so that’s why it helps.
There’s a reason people call it the best follower quality tool for Twitter. Because it doesn’t just give you data, it gives you control.
Want help running your first audit?
You might be surprised what’s dragging your account down. And once it’s gone, growth feels a lot less like guesswork.