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Buying Twitter followers is a sin, says Saudi cleric

That may be especially bad news for the U.S. presidential candidates.

 

Fernando Alfonso III

Tech

Posted on Aug 20, 2012   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 12:35 pm CDT

Buying Twitter followers has received a lot of press recently, thanks to some political heavyweights opening their wallets to build their social media footprint.

Now the practice is being called a sin.

In a recent interview with Saudi online news site Sabq, senior scholar Sheikh Abdullah called it “a lie and slander” to spend money on buying followers, Al Arabiya reported.

Abdullah’s remarks come after reports that other prominent Saudis have spent “between $70 and $270 for adding up to 10,000 new followers to a customer’s Twitter account,” Al Arabiya reported.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been accused of buying followers after the presidential hopeful gained more than 100,000 new fans in 24 hours. President Barack Obama, on the other hand, hasn’t “sinned,” but has been chastised for having an awful lot of fake followers.

If this all keeps up, maybe buying Twitter followers can go all the way and make it to “8th deadly sin” status.

Photo by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML

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*First Published: Aug 20, 2012, 10:27 am CDT