RIYADH — Paying money to certain people to follow you on Twitter is impermissible, according to Abdullah Al-Mutlaq, member of the Senior Board of Ulema. Some time ago, Abdul Rahman Al-Kharashi tweeted he discovered that some individuals on Twitter pay money get others to follow them. Al-Kharashi revealed the names of the websites where one could pay to get such fake followers. Abdullah Al-Ghidami, a writer, said it is easy today to have tens of thousands followers on Twitter by paying a meager sum of money. Khalid Al-Ghazi, who has a Twitter account, tweeted that he bought 70,000 followers and the whole thing cost him less than SR40. A number of "famous" people have done the same and bought fake followers to convince others a large number of fans like them and follow their news. In fact, it has become like a competition among Saudi tweeters. A popular person is the one who has 200,000 or more followers. Today, the general public who use Twitter have their doubts about the number of followers shown on the accounts of famous people, including religious scholars. What is strange is that sometimes an account will show tens of thousands of followers when the tweeter's activities are few; he barely makes any comments or tweets. It is obvious that those such tweeters wants to show off and pretend they are an important figure with a large following. Fayez Al-Shehri, expert on e-journalism and new media, accused a number of well-known persons of using dubious methods to pad the number of their followers.
