JUBA, JANUARY 28th 2023 (SUDANS POST) – The popular alternative news outlet Hot in Juba on Friday ranked Cairo-based comedian Penton Keah as the most followed South Sudanese on Facebook.
According to the ranking, Penton is followed by over 954,000 people making him the mostly followed South Sudanese on the social media platform.
The African History, a locally managed page, comes second with 737,000 followers.
Luol Deng, the highly-respected head of the national basketball team, and Melbourne-based singer Slate Nation comes the third and the fourth with 713,000 and 560,000 followers, respectively.
Other popular South Sudanese mentioned in the rank include Achair Wiir who has over 329,000 followers, Lady Kola, 302,000 followers and Silver X with 240,000 followers.
The ranking was met with mixed reactions with some accusing Hot in Juba of snubbing certain pages despite having huge number of followers.
When contacted by Sudans Post, Mariak Bol Majok, the managing director and editor in chief of Hot in Juba, confirmed that curtained pages have intentionally been left out.
He explained why.
“We have been doing this annually. We have noticed some pages have been buying followers so we disqualify them being part of the ranking,” he said.
“We look at the follower count of mainly pages that have passed the 100,000 marks. Most of the pages left out have obtained followers using bots,” he added.