Charlie Baker Twitter account inundated by bots

Imagine the horror of waking up to find that your Twitter follower count had nearly doubled overnight. That’s just what happened Sunday to Massachusetts gubernatorial hopeful Charlie Baker.

“It was more puzzling than traumatic,’’ said Tim Buckley, communications director for Baker’s campaign. “We knew Charlie’s Twitter account was really popular, but not 5,000 new followers in an hour popular.’’

My account appears to have been targeted by unwanted "bot-followers," so it is currently private. We're trying to resolve the issue quickly.

— Charlie Baker (@CharlieForGov) March 17, 2014

According to Buckley, the account had 5,962 followers on the evening of Friday, March 14. By Sunday, it had over 9,000.

“Charlie realized it first,’’ said Buckley. “Every time he picked up his phone he had a notification that he got another thousand random new followers.’’

In a later tweet, Baker specified that he believed the spike was an “attack’’ on his account. The goal of such an “attack,’’ the motive, and the perpetrator remain mysteries.

When an account suddenly gains thousands of new followers out of nowhere, it usually indicates that those followers were bought. There are two types of Twitter “bots.’’ Some, like the ones developed by Darius Kazemi, are coded to send tweets automatically and “learn’’ from other Twitter accounts. This type of bot is unlikely to be responsible for Baker’s seeming surge in popularity. The other type is essentially a fake profile that blindly follows other accounts. Web services like Devumi claim to “strengthen your online credibility’’ by providing these generic followers for a fee. You get what you pay for – low-cost followers tend to have empty profiles and are easily detectable, while a higher fee will get you more realistic followers.

“We were just concerned at the appearance,’’ said Buckley. “We’re not paying any type of service to increase followers. They looked a lot like spam followers, so at that time on Sunday evening we set the account to private to block unwanted followers.’’

After the attackers stopped flowing in, the account was reopened.

“We’re still talking with Twitter,’’ said Buckley. “They don’t see all these people as spam. We obviously disagree, but we opened the account.’’

Some critics of Baker’s campaign accused him of paying for new followers, including Tom McGee, chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party.

Big jump in followers for @charlieforgov overnight. $ might buy twitter love but @massdems knows organizing wins in November #mapoli #magov

— Tom McGee (@TomMcGeeDSC) March 17, 2014

The influx of bot followers brings Baker’s Twitter following to just shy of 10,000, which is significantly closer to Democratic frontrunner Martha Coakley’s almost 14,000.

Baker is one of two Republican candidates in the gubernatorial race – the other is the Tea Party-affiliated Mark Fisher, whose Twitter account has 958 followers. As the Massachusetts Republican convention draws near, the more moderate Baker appears to be favored as the more realistic candidate.

Coincidentally, Baker had received some praise this year for his Twitter proficiency from Boston.com.

At the moment, the Baker campaign has no leads as to who “attacked’’ him. Buckley says law enforcement will not be contacted, stating, “they have bigger fish to fry.’’