Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy to be hit by Elon Musk Twitter purge

Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy will be the most-affected golfers by Elon Musk’s promised Twitter purge.

Musk, the new owner of the social media giant, has promised to crack down on fake and spam accounts since forking out $44billion to buy the site earlier this year.

He said he would “die trying” in his bid to rid the site of bots and fake profiles, a feature for which it has come in for heavy criticism.

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According to an audit of false accounts carried out by gambling.com using SparkToro software, Woods has the highest number of fake followers, with a massive 2.6million of the accounts following him deemed to be false.

McIlroy is also followed by a high number of spam accounts on 1.1million, around 100,000 ahead of Ian Poulter.

Others with high numbers of fake followers include Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, Bubba Watson, Brooks Koepka and Sergio Garcia.

The highest percentage of fake followers, however, belongs to former US PGA champion Jason Dufner, who would lose 52% of his count if Musk follows through with his pledge.

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Europe’s Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald is close behind, with more than 49% of his followers found to be fake.

Graeme McDowell, Fowler and Spieth would also lose nearly half of their followers in the event of a crackdown.