Hyderabad: The Telugu Desam on Tuesday clarified on its official Facebook page that the charges of faking Facebook likes is a baseless allegation. It said the official page of Nara Chandrababu Naidu, which had 1.44 lakh followers, was merged with the Telugu Desam’s official page due to which there was an overnight jump in numbers. It said that the FB pages likes went up overnight because of the merging of Mr Naidu’s page with that of the party.
“Among the 1.4 lakh followers of Chandrababu Naidu’s page, 70,000 had already “liked” TD’s official page while another 70,000 were automatically added, swelling the count overnight. This process has been authorised by Facebook and was not carried out using dubious means,” it said.
Our correspondent responds: Telugu Desam didn’t explain how it got 4,482 likes from Turkey, which amounts to 1 per cent of the total FB likes of the party’s page. According to the Ministry of Overseas Affairs, there are only 239 Indians living in Turkey, including 200 NRIs and 39 persons of Indian Origin. This figure is of the total number of Indians and not Telugus. When there are only 239 Indians living in Turkey, how did the party get 4,482 likes from there? In fact, till recently, the maximum number of Facebook likes for the TD, after India, were from Turkey. More recently, the United States occupied second position. It is interesting to note that from the United States, with 22.4 lakh Indians that includes a large Telugu population, the TD has only 6,199 likes and from the United Arab Emirates, with 17.5 lakh population, the TD has only 1,617 likes. Interestingly, from Azerbaijan, which has 524 Indians living there, the TD has got 166 likes. The party couldn’t explain how it has so many likes from strange countries like Georgia and Bulgaria.
If one goes by these figures, it has to be believed that Turkish and Kurdish people in Turkey have started liking the Telugu Desam more than the Telugus, Indians and non -Indians in any other part of the world.
Turkey has been under suspicion in the case of former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and others, where it was alleged that Facebook ‘likes’ emanating from that country were manipulated. There are several online links that show how Facebook likes can be brought from Turkey based groups. The TD also didn’t explain why the party chief’s Facebook page was merged with that of the party for the “overnight” surge in numbers.
The analysis of Facebook page likes is done by socialbakers, an independent organisation that analyses social media statistics.
It’s also to be noted that the TD had an 18 per cent fan base till a week ago from “others and uncategorised countries”. This has dropped to four per cent of the claimed merger by the TD.
Interestingly socialbakers analysis of fake followers says the twitter account of Mr Naidu’s son, Lokesh, has 42 per cent of suspicious or empty followers, while Mr Naidu has 57 per cent of suspicious or empty followers. on his twitter account.
Only likes will be accepted
Facebook provides an option for the merging of pages by which a duplicate or similar page can be merged with another adding the ‘Likes’ the latter had received to that of the parent page.
However, all content from the page to be merged will be removed and only the ‘Likes’ will be carried forward and added to the parent page. The page with fewer Likes will be merged with the page with a higher number of Likes.
According to Facebook, “This option is available only for pages that represent the same thing and have similar names.”
Facebook adds, “The people who like your pages and checkins will be combined, but all other content will be deleted from the page you merge.” Content on the page you want to keep will remain unchanged, except for the addition of people who like your page and checkins that were merged from the other page. The page you don’t want to keep will be removed from Facebook, and you won't be able to unmerge it.”
