I am a bit dumb with this. So will Jack be buying these bots? Is it expensive to do this? Surely twitter must be aware of this, though why would they care I guess.
Could be Jack or her agent or maybe even a well-meaning squig. Anyone can buy bots for anyone else, so it could be anyone with a vested interest in maintaining the facade (until book release in January?), as a decline in followers is a strong signal that everyone can and will see.
Twitter tends to 'prune' bots after around 20-30 days so there's still value in buying them as it smooths the figures, Jack's count visibly drops by .1k after several hours or a day, then they buy some and over the next couple of days it really starts visibly climbing (this was a really good example).
In terms of price just had a quick gander, £19 can net you 500 followers, £29 for 1000 and that's for ones with real people names. These must be smartprice followers.
Looks like they're combatting the exodus and they could do this indefinitely as long as they've got the £££
Again this is all theoretical (but based on what people actually do) as
@binkbonk said she could indeed be caught in being used as a nominal blue ticker but I don't see it myself. The count dropping and then being maintained or pumped slightly appears to be more congruent with a targeted approach.
Sorry to be FORENSIC, but this flat is cash purchase only and not a mortgageable property (99% likely this is due to sub 80 year lease), so the price will be below market level and she'd have to stump up in full, as well as the cost (sub 10k) and paperwork (instruct solicitor, which is well in her skill set) of getting the lease extended.
But your actual point is bang on.
I really appreciated the points raised recently as to why it's unlikely she's got the readies for a cash buy, but that whole 'downsize in 6 months time' thing really weedled me. There's definitely a specific reason for that because she brought it up unprompted, but my theory is based on nothing more than the stuff about having the cash in your account for that long to minimise money laundering questions.