Are Your Dead Followers Really Dead?

The Discovery

Asha Mertens was verifying account authenticity when she found the first match. Robert Calloway's obituary was from 2019. His Instagram account had liked 14 posts in the past month.

The second match was Patricia Huang. Died in 2017. Her account had followed 37 new users in the past quarter. The third was Devon Williams, killed in a car accident in 2016. His Twitter account had liked a cryptocurrency promotion four days ago.

The Scale

Of 11 million dormant accounts identified as part of coordinated swarms, 3.2% belonged to people who were verifiably dead. That is 359,000 accounts. The realistic estimate: over a million dead people, active on social media.

Why Dead Accounts?

The answer is trust. An account created by a real human being who used it for years carries a trust score approaching the theoretical maximum. Platform algorithms treat their actions as genuine. Their likes register as real engagement. They are algorithmically invisible.

The full investigation: The Lazarus Network. Complete report: Read the full analysis.