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Billie Eilish lost 100k followers after coming out (www.thepinknews.com)

submitted 11 months ago by roastedDeflator@kbin.social to c/lgbtq_plus@beehaw.org

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Billie Eilish has lost a whopping 100,000 Instagram followers since coming out last month and sharing she was attracted to women.

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[-] Crankpork@beehaw.org 17 points 11 months ago

The percentage was low, but 100k people is still a lot of people.

[-] Curiousfur@yiffit.net 11 points 11 months ago

Probably a lot of them were bots

[-] morhp@lemmy.wtf 13 points 11 months ago

Why would a bot unfollow because someone is coming out as lesbian?

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 10 points 11 months ago

Correlation != causation.

That because is doing some heavy lifting

[-] morhp@lemmy.wtf 2 points 11 months ago

The post itself implies causation. Also why would a bot unfollow at all?

[-] Mars@beehaw.org 14 points 11 months ago

Bots are routinely rounded up and banned. A lost follower is not necessarily an unfollow.

The article is reaching for a narrative. The lady they talk about has done other things in this period of time. Other stuff has happened. The change in followers is minuscule in relation to the magnitude, so it could be noise.

It could be homophobia obviously. It could be some controversy about unfortunate body image declarations. It could be noise. It could be the war on Middle East and a round of banned bots. It could be too much time since the last record. She could be losing the spotlight. The social network could be purging deleted accounts.

The reason “homophobia” is a guess. The reason “bots” is another. None invalidates the other because in both cases you have to make assumptions about the motives of 100.000 entities.

Also could be 5.100.000 followers lost and 5mil gained. The article talks about the delta, but there is not a reliable analysis about the composition of the following and its change over the last months, except one simple number.