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Michael Symon Among Celebrities Who Bought Twitter Followers, Including Fake Accounts, According to New York Times

By Sam Allard on Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 4:00 pm

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Michael Symon Among Celebrities Who Bought Twitter Followers, Including Fake Accounts, According to New York Times

Courtesy Food Network

In a scorching New York Times report this weekend (“The Follower Factory”), Michael Symon was among the named celebrities who had purchased fraudulent Twitter followers from a shadowy company peddling social media influence

Duvemi, the company, reportedly has a stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, and sells them repeatedly. It has provided more than 200 million Twitter followers to celebrities looking to expand their digital reach.

Symon, the local celebrity chef, now has nearly 1 million followers. The Times investigation revealed that he’d purchased 100,000 followers from Duvemi in 2014 and an additional 500,000 in 2015. He’d also purchased bots in bulk in 2013.

“I thought it would drive traffic,” said Symon. “I thought it was going to be influencers and people in my field. It’s embarrassing.”

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About The Author

Sam Allard

Sam Allard is the Senior Writer at Scene, in which capacity he covers politics and power and writes about movies when time permits. He's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and the NEOMFA at Cleveland State. Prior to joining Scene, he was encamped in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on an...