There weeks after SFLTV discovered and documented in detail WPLG’s sudden and explosive growth in Twitter followers, last night during the 11pm newscast the station aired a story titled ‘Paying to be popular’, telling viewers they were in fact buying Twitter followers for @WPLGLocal10 but it was just a test. For their on air story.
They basically told viewers everyone’s buying, or implied they had, fake Twitter followers, which is true, ghost accounts are constantly following @sfltv and @sfltvbossman so you get them whether you want to or not.
We noticed as their social media expert talked about trust, WPLG strategically flashed it’s logo on screen, which I thought was interesting.
At the end of the story, Janine Stanwood claimed she was going to start the process of getting rid of the phoney followers, and viewers probably believed her but if you look closely or appears all she did was log out of an account. As of 8:12am @WPLGLocal10 still has 123k followers.
So all of this begs the question, what was the point of this test when WPLG devoted most of the story time to talking about celebs having fake followers, their social media expert, and the celeb reporter lady?
If it was a test, why add 90,000+ followers? Why stop briefly at 80,000 then continue again?
Why, during the #lovelocal10 campaign in September (when by the way they hardly gained any followers at all) did WPLG repeatedly use on-air graphics showing their twitter follower count as 120k when in reality it was around 30,000?
Are you buying what they’re selling or did WPLG just dug themselves in deeper?
They are like Hillary, not to be trusted. It is amazing how in such a short time that station has turned into bottom feeders. That tongue in cheek on air piece is laughable. As usual the cover up and justification is worse than the act itself. Now they are giving away cars to get viewers. Sad.
I thought the story was interesting. I actually like 10 these days. much improved.
This was one of the most pathetic “news” stories I’ve ever seen on air. They got caught red-handed and are trying to cover it up. Their “experiment” doesn’t explain their photoshopping of their followers in a not so veiled attempt to appear more popular than WSVN. Between this and their “porn cop” story that basically gave free exposure to the scumbag trying to sell a tape of a police officer who used to do explicit videos, I would be truly embarrassed if I were a WPLG employee right now.
InTheNo………….Like Hillary? Your team is jumping ship one by one…….and the clown car keeps getting a flat tire.
Your name has it InTheNo as in NOthing
fake followers are still there… 3 weeks after this story…
Still incredibly dumb, and still a violation of what journalism standards should be.
They should be persecuted or fined for their worng doing s.
Please watch your composition and grammar!