Fake social media accounts are incredibly popular and cost businesses large amounts of money. Here are some tips that can help you spot them.
Now that social media has become a profitable business, companies are cracking down on fake followers. These bots can be purchased to have more followers and increase engagement on Instagram profiles but once you’ve learned the tells they’re pretty easy to spot.
While some people gain massive amount of followers through purchasing bots, it’s practically impossible to avoid having some fake followers of your own. According to Harper’s Bazaar, some of Instagram’s most popular celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, Ariana Grande and Priyanka Chopra, have as much as 49% of their followers as fake bots.
RELATED: Can You Sue If Someone Posts An Unflattering Photo Of You On Social Media?
Here are 5 tips that can make it easy for you to spot fake Instagram accounts.
Compare followers vs amount of likes
Someone who has tons of followers should also have tons of likes. Math is math, so if someone’s likes and followers ratio is way off it suggests that a large portion of their followers are inactive bots. Fake followers are pretty limited in their engagement; they mostly follow you and drop a couple of generic comments on some of your photos.
Compare followers vs accounts followed
One of the easiest ways to spot a fake Instagram account is to check their amount of followers and the amount of people they follow. If they follow a lot of accounts yet have have barely any followers, it means that no one knows them or finds their content legitimate.
RELATED: Oh, Goody! More Ads Are Coming To Instagram
Check the account’s engagement
Fake accounts are very irregular with their content, maybe uploading a lot of posts and leaving lots of likes and comments for a few days and then disappearing for weeks. Genuine influencers and active Instagram users tend to upload content on a semi regular basis, that way developing a steady base of followers.
Use the help of apps and websites
While they’re not the most legitimate of sources, there are tons of apps and websites a Google search away claiming to let you know about your fake followers. There are also sites like Social Blade that allow you to run accounts through their data base and inform you on their analytics.
