Break down the when using third-party sites.

Then came the "Audit." A popular tech watchdog account tweeted a list of "The Week's Biggest Fakes." Alex was number three. The Reddit thread he'd trusted? It was a farm of paid shills. Within 48 hours, Twitter’s spam filters swept his account, leaving him with 12 followers and a permanent shadowban.

Late one night, he spiraled into a Reddit rabbit hole. A thread titled "Best sites to buy Twitter followers - 2026 Updated" caught his eye. The top comment, with dozens of upvotes, raved about a site called 'SocialJet'. "Looks organic," the user wrote. "Dropped 5k followers in an hour and haven't lost a single one."