Elon Musk‘s X (formerly Twitter) follower count is sparking some controversy.

The 52-year-old billionaire and owner of the social media platform is currently followed by 153.8 million users on X.

However, newly acquired data suggests that a large subset of his followers are possibly fake accounts or almost totally inactive on the platform.

Read more about Elon Musk’s followers on X…

According to data presented by Mashable and compiled by Travis Brown, Elon‘s X account is followed by millions of questionable accounts.

More accurately, 65.3 million of his followers aren’t followed by anyone else, and the vast majority (112 million) don’t even have 10 followers. Almost as many (100 million) have only posted 10 messages, and approximately a quarter of them created accounts on the platform after Elon assumed ownership of it in late 2022.

Aside from being largely inactive on the platform, less than one percent of Elon‘s followers pay into his X Premium subscription service.

Are the accounts fake? The data could not specify bot accounts from inactive ones of users who “lurk” on the platform without posting. However, there are some inconclusive signs that a portion of them are not real. For instance, the accounts still have their default profile photo from when they opened their account, showing that they have not taken time to personalize their presence on the site.

At the time of publishing, Elon has not addressed his follower count. .

The news comes after Elon teased another big change on X.