In the world of social media, there are lots of features and things available to help you grow a decently sized following and get your brand out there.
Unfortunately, there is a darker side to the social media and influencer world. People can feel an immense amount of pressure to stay popular online and will go to drastic measures to make sure they stay relevant and in the spotlight.
The pressure can lead to a lot of people buying fake followers and this can cause a whole set of problems. But what is a fake follower? How do they affect your profile and how can you get rid of them? Read on to find out everything you need to know about this epidemic.
In a lot of cases, these profiles will steal their names and some information from real people. Some of the fake profiles with pictures will have taken that profile picture from an already existing profile.
Fake profiles and followers are usually created by agencies that specialize in fake followers and influencers and other people will spend a lot of money on these fake followers.
Even if you think these profiles are real people, they 100% aren’t. When fake profiles comment on posts, they are always computer-generated responses and are usually copied and pasted from other comments too.
Another common name for fake profiles and followers is “bots”. So when you see someone using that phrase, this is what they are talking about.
How Do Fake Followers Affect Your Profile?
The honest truth about fake followers is that they don’t do any good for your profile. If your posts are littered with fake follower comments or you have hundreds of thousands of followers but hardly any engagement, it makes you look dishonest to other real profiles.
When you look dishonest, you instantly become unreliable and untrustworthy and no one will want to follow you or invest in your brand.
Another issue with any only reputation is that once you have a bad one, that information will spread pretty quickly.
Accounts that have become aware of the fact you have lots of fake followers will tell others about it and if you become infamously well known enough, people will just avoid your profile and content altogether.
Lots of people buy fake followers just because they believe it will help them gain real followers quickly. But this is unfortunately not true in the slightest.
Buying fake followers is a very dangerous game that can quickly spiral out of control. Because it can get quite expensive as well, you’re essentially spending loads of money to discredit yourself.
How To Spot Fake Followers
Luckily, there are many ways that you can spot fake followers. Even if you don’t buy fake followers yourself, some people can buy fake followers for you in order to discredit your brand.
If you’re worried that you may have been infected by fake followers on your profile, then don’t worry. Here’s how you can spot them and contain them.
The first thing you want to do is go to the suspected fake follower’s page. If they have no posts or very few and those posts seem a bit suspicious, then they are likely a fake account.
If their profile picture is of an already existing person or even worse, not a real person at all, they are likey a fake account. A lot of these fake accounts don’t even bother to add a profile picture, so that makes spotting them even easier.
Another great way to work out if the profile is fake is by looking at their comments on other people’s posts. Fake profiles are very shallow in their comments and usually very “weird” looking.
When you read their comments, you’ll get the sense that the way they are communicating doesn’t feel very human. They’ll comment things like “Amazing!” or “I love this!” and it all just feels very… off.
Fake followers and accounts are not very consistent in any way. They will appear out of nowhere and then go completely silent for a very, very long time. Sometimes they’ll comment on something once and you’ll never see them anywhere ever again.
Fake followers are overall just not very fluid and “human” in the way they behave, and if you feel like an account is off in any way, then others will feel it too.
Ways To Get Rid Of Fake Followers
Once you’ve identified a fake follower, you can go about getting rid of them. There are a couple of ways you can do this and we’ll be going over them here.
The first thing you’ll want to do is report the account to the moderators of whatever social media platform you’re using. You can usually report them straight from their profile.
Once you’ve reported them, you may have to wait a while before anything is done about it, but the more people that report the account, the more likely it will be taken down.
After you’ve reported them, take a screenshot of the profile and add it to your story. Let everyone know that it’s a fake profile and to steer clear of it. This is just something you can do to help others and give your account a better reputation.
Finally, you’ll want to block the account. Once they are blocked, they’ll no longer be able to interact with anything you post.
Conclusion
If you’re considering buying some fake followers to get your account off the ground, the best advice we can give you is to not bother doing that. It will only cause you more problems in the future.
Building up a real and good following on social media will take time. If you have good and consistent content though, you’ll see your following grow with no problems at all.
Hi, my name is Justin Shaw, I started my career with a Masters in Computer Science but found writing to be my forte'.
I'm now the Principal Tech writer for GshiftLabs.com as well as a few other well known publications. I help make the complex world of Tech-Jargon easy to understand.
