According to an online audit of the prime minister's official Twitter account almost half his followers are considered fake.
While the tech-savvy leader has more followers than any other serving Australian politician – just over 654,000 – TwitterAudit has found 298,000 of them aren't real.
That leaves him with an authenticity score of just 54 per cent – the lowest of any senior federal politician.
It also means his one-time leadership rival Tony Abbott – who once dismissively described social media as "electronic graffiti" – actually has more real followers: 400,000 of his 615,000 followers are considered authentic.
In the lead-up to the 2013 election the Liberal Party was forced to deny it had paid to increase Mr Abbott's numbers after his followers suddenly spiked.
