Tory Eastbourne candidate accused over dodgy Twitter accounts

The Sunday Times reports:

AS A mother of three, a teacher and schools inspector, Caroline Ansell would appear to have the perfect profile for a Conservative parliamentary candidate. Yet the would-be MP for the marginal seat of Eastbourne also appears to speak at least seven languages and to be interested in images of scantily clad Chinese glamour models.

At least, that is if we are to judge her predilections by the people she follows on Twitter…

A more likely explanation is that [she is] using a controversial method of inflating their popularity on the site by indiscriminately “following back” every account that follows them as a form of quid pro quo that maximises the followers of both.

One thing is certain about indiscriminately following back such a large and diverse number of followers: it means your Twitter timeline becomes unusable as a way of finding messages to engage with, which rather takes the social out of social media.