Name: Paul Hollywood.
Age: 51.
Appearance: Poor man’s George Clooney.
Occupation: Baker turned TV celebrity.
Famous for: Oh, I don’t know. Some cookery programme, I think.
I think you mean The Great British Bake Off. Yes, quite right. With Simon Cowell, wasn’t it?
Mary Berry. Until Channel 4 poached the programme. What a team they were. I seem to know a lot more about him than you. Look, I’m not interested in Mr Hollywood’s baking and judging abilities, but in the fact he has been caught up in a major New York Times investigation into the buying and selling of fake internet identities, known as bots.
Sounds dull. Not at all. The NYT has uncovered a Florida-based company called Devumi that allegedly buys and sells fake followers so that celebs and internet “influencers” look as though they have a greater digital impact than is really the case. You can buy packages of 1,000 followers for $17 (£12) a pop and have hundreds of thousands of acolytes in no time. Devumi is said to offer at least 3.5m automated accounts.
Sounds like a good deal. I fear you are missing the point. This is alleged fraud and is being investigated by New York’s chief prosecutor.
Where does Hollywood fit into this? He was named by the NYT as having Devumi-supplied bots among his 683,000 Twitter followers. When the paper approached him with a series of questions, he deleted the account; he has been tweeting using the handle @Hollywoodbaker since October.
Nice name. How many followers does he have now? At last count, 533.
533,000? No, 533.
Oh well. Early days. I’m sure it will build. Indeed. Who could resist insights such as: “What’s everyone baking today? We are going to be mostly baking (& eating) Paul’s Frangipane Mince pies.”
How did Hollywood come by the fake followers? His spokesperson said: “Paul deleted his personal account last week when he was alerted to the fake followers.” The spokesperson added that the great majority of his followers “were legitimate, but like lots of high-profile people he followed advice at the time to build up his social media presence without realising what it involved”.
Not to be confused with: Swimmer Adam Peaty, rower James Cracknell, internet pioneer Martha Lane Fox and lots of American sportspeople and minor celebrities, who were also accused of having fake Devumi-supplied followers.
Do say: “What a scam!”
Don’t say: “You don’t have a number for Devumi, do you? My follower count is embarrassingly low.”
