Le Petit Journal accused of buying followers on Twitter – Canal Plus denies

With popularity in free fall, the satirical program from Canal Plus is accused of buying followers on social networks to limit damage. The encrypted channel denies.

Since the start of the season, the new version of the Small Diary hard to convince... The proof: many fans have unsubscribed from the Facebook and Twitter page of the Canal Plus satirical show since the departure of Yann Barthès.

The arrival of Cyrille Eldin at the head of the program had already caused the departure of more than 80 subscribers on the program's Facebook page, with Internet users preferring to follow that of the Daily on TF1. The popularity of Small Diary would therefore be in free fall, just like the audiences, with 100 fewer viewers between the second and third day of broadcast. On Twitter, once reaching a million subscribers, the small newspaper today has 970, losing 000 subscribers in less than a week.

The Twitter account of the Petit journal (@LPJofficiel) has lost 10.000 subscribers since Sunday… #LPJ pic.twitter.com/D3NeFvMSd3

— Arnaud Focraud (@AFocraud) September 7, 2016

But according to The Express, the Canal group would be ready to put its hand in its pocket to limit the damage by buying followers… Indeed, new subscribers would have miraculously appeared on the Twitter account of the Small Diary, including many young women named Lily Rose. These profiles were created in September, do not have a profile photo and have never tweeted.

Le Petit Journal may be losing viewers but gaining followers. pic.twitter.com/4ibsTVmF7e

— yom (@y0m) September 8, 2016

Canal+, which responded to L'Express, formally denies having purchased followers on behalf of Small Diary, and indicates that it is “ serious accusations" However, the weekly contacted a social media expert who said: “ As long as people have no profile photo, no cover photo and have only tweeted once or twice, it’s fishy”.

Buying followers, a wise choice to hide a predicted disaster?