Skate brands and pros buying FAKE FOLLOWERS???

[FS-OverKOOK]

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Russian bots, dude...

[close]

true. I’ve been hacked before by someone in Russia and I get added to fake porn group chats on Instagram by a fake Russian bot account. It happens to everyone I bring it up to as well

is that like the late night shit on skinamax?

[Christmas Complete]

Close one, but still #teamlizzie

[Style Police]

Just because everyone is probably wondering

One of Mikey's companies

[HyenaChaser]

Close one, but still #teamlizzie

Nora is clearly the people's champ

[Krill]

Companies and brands buying followers has really become standard over the past few years.

The real problem IMO are 'influencers' with fake/purchased followers who try to use their supposed clout to hustle free product and money$$$

I handle social media for a consumer products brand and get requests for free stuff or money in return for posts or stories all the time. From influencers with tens of thousands of followers, but then their pics get under 100 likes. IG Audit is a great tool and works really well, especially for a free tool.

Would be interesting to get stats on some skate influencers out there...

[Murge]

Companies and brands buying followers has really become standard over the past few years.

The real problem IMO are 'influencers' with fake/purchased followers who try to use their supposed clout to hustle free product and money$$$

I handle social media for a consumer products brand and get requests for free stuff or money in return for posts or stories all the time. From influencers with tens of thousands of followers, but then their pics get under 100 likes. IG Audit is a great tool and works really well, especially for a free tool.

Would be interesting to get stats on some skate influencers out there...

J Scott. Hillary shanks. Skate moss. Berra.

[cookiecuttersuburb]

darkstar def has a real online following

THIS

[Fongstarr.]

Someone do Manny Santiago's company. I swear when he started it, he had a ton of follows off the get go.

[CHONGO]

I am pretty sure this is a common thing

[cosmicgypsies]

biebel 46% real 

[shannamal]

i one time bought 25k followers for my best friend, and didn't tell him. the next day, 100's of follows a second started rolling in.

best $9 i've ever spent

[Hevonen]

The engagement rate doesn't really tell the whole story. An old account will have a bunch of old accounts and random bots, and also if the hype has died down the algorithm doesn't favor that accounts posts and shows them last in your feed.

A good way to detect who has actually bought followers is looking at spikes in follower growth. The most obvious is probably Mikey Taylor who went from 500k to almost 900k during this year without having done anything.



Also sometimes accounts get re-used so that a new skate company buys a failed skate company's account so that they have a bunch of followers right from the start

[Just Giver]

Hey now, just because they're high-school dropouts who strictly lurk the local pre-fab, their incoherent begging for a free board doesn't make them "fake." 

[ChronicBluntSlider]

I personally am fascinated by mikey taylor’s Instagram account. Although it is pretty obvious he’s bought hundreds of thousands of followers, every post has hundreds of mindlessly positive comments, which he then responds to each one with something mindlessly positive. Literally not one comment that has any kind of substance/humanity to it. Could he be faking/buying his own comments?

[georgethecat]

I’m just trying to get things clear here, I’m not trying call anyone out (although I can call out numerous accounts) but I’m noticing so many accounts that have fake followers. Big name brands that we would’ve never guessed, with a butt load of followers, but not the amount of likes or comments to back it up. I know it’s just the internet and why do I care...I don’t, but it’s kind of embarrassing when a brand that we grew up on has 100k followers and then like 400 likes. Idk. Just weird to me and was hoping someone could justify this for me or maybe I have the wrong idea of it all.

I think maybe you do.

[Madam, I'm Adam]

I think Javier Nunez was calling people out for doing this. We should all listen to Javier Nunez regarding a great deal of issues, really.

[Style Police]

I personally am fascinated by mikey taylor’s Instagram account. Although it is pretty obvious he’s bought hundreds of thousands of followers, every post has hundreds of mindlessly positive comments, which he then responds to each one with something mindlessly positive. Literally not one comment that has any kind of substance/humanity to it. Could he be faking/buying his own comments?

100%

[georgethecat]

I think Javier Nunez was calling people out for doing this. We should all listen to Javier Nunez regarding a great deal of issues, really.

WWJND

[Iceman]

This isnt just skateboarding, its every industry that gives social media any relevancy.
Youtube videos are the same way.  You can purchase thousands of views for a post no problem.

genuinely curious as i've never heard that about youtube. would you happen to have a link?

i one time bought 25k followers for my best friend, and didn't tell him. the next day, 100's of follows a second started rolling in.

best $9 i've ever spent

you're a true pal

[Style Police]

[sometimeperhaps]

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I personally am fascinated by mikey taylor’s Instagram account. Although it is pretty obvious he’s bought hundreds of thousands of followers, every post has hundreds of mindlessly positive comments, which he then responds to each one with something mindlessly positive. Literally not one comment that has any kind of substance/humanity to it. Could he be faking/buying his own comments?

[close]

100%

I think so too. There was an "influencer" account I used to follow - the guy posted cool interior photos or his house, and fits  - and within 10 minutes of every post he'd have 30-40 comments from similar "influencer" accounts. Similar absent minded comments on every post, and he'd reply back with some generic thank you. Seems like a good scam he was running though, as it didn't seem to obvious he was fuckin with bots/automation.

[Seadramon]

i one time bought 25k followers for my best friend, and didn't tell him. the next day, 100's of follows a second started rolling in.

best $9 i've ever spent

Brilliant

[DaveBYO]

Glad people are doing some in depth research on this stuff. It's crazy how much insta has changed the way we perceive and consume skateboarding.

 

[HyenaChaser]

Skatemosss: 73% real
hilaryshankss: 80% real
jscott_handsdown: 78% real

mannysantiago: 74% real
fortuneskate: 65% real

Steve Berra's account is private

I got 68% for Skatemosss, seems like that's within the margin of error. I'm actually somewhat surprised at that. Then again she is an attractive woman and I'm sure there's plenty of people who want to…"follow her feed"

[EastKremer]

At least I’m proud that the shirt account/homies brand page I have got better stats than most of the sk8 accounts lmao

[clintendo]

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i one time bought 25k followers for my best friend, and didn't tell him. the next day, 100's of follows a second started rolling in.

best $9 i've ever spent

[close]

Brilliant

We did it as a prank on someone who was legit trying to be an "influencer" cost us a bit more than $9 but it was worth it to see how much of a tool the person turned into once he started getting a heap of followers... They didn't know for a solid 6 months that we had purchased them as a group until he hit up a company to do some sponsored content and they shut him done because they knew most of his followers were fake.

I wondered for a while how they knew that, figured they had someone sift through all the followers but then I saw this tool and it all made sense, learnt something new today so thank you!

[Billy Bitchcakes]

Low engagement on Instagram doesn't necessarily mean that the account has fake followers. Facebook (they own Instagram) rolled out their "boost" strategy to Instagram a long time ago.

Basically, you take a page/account with a good amount of followers and stop showing posts to all their followers. Then you tell the page/account that to get better engagement, they must boost/sponsor the post. The brand has to pay to reach their "own" audience.

that's true for facebook, i don't think that's been imposed on instagram yet though. i'm sure it's coming though and the 'hiding likes' thing is the first step, under the guise of helping people's mental health. i'm gonna be pissed off when that happens as i run my work IG and we use it to promote everything we do and it works pretty well. when we publish the same content to our FB page with the same number of followers it literally gets seen by about 10 people. i've no doubt they'll force me to change the IG account to a 'business' one soon enough and make me pay to get anyone to see our posts.

also i wouldn't trust that fake followers aggregator too much, i just ran ours through it and got like 54% real followers which i know is bullshit. we only have a small number to go off though

[feedmeseymour]

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Just because everyone is probably wondering

[close]

One of Mikey's companies

low engagement on his avni account is probably because that instagram was originally an account called flying strangers and they posted really great photography, then he turned it into some boring podcast.

[doyle]

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I personally am fascinated by mikey taylor’s Instagram account. Although it is pretty obvious he’s bought hundreds of thousands of followers, every post has hundreds of mindlessly positive comments, which he then responds to each one with something mindlessly positive. Literally not one comment that has any kind of substance/humanity to it. Could he be faking/buying his own comments?

[close]

100%

[close]

I think so too. There was an "influencer" account I used to follow - the guy posted cool interior photos or his house, and fits  - and within 10 minutes of every post he'd have 30-40 comments from similar "influencer" accounts. Similar absent minded comments on every post, and he'd reply back with some generic thank you. Seems like a good scam he was running though, as it didn't seem to obvious he was fuckin with bots/automation.

I think a lot of this is "instagram pods." Basically groups you join (DMs or Facebook groups or whatever), and every time a pod member posts something, everyone else will go and like/comment on it. It's really weird and popular with Instagram photography. Example.

[landedprimo]

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I personally am fascinated by mikey taylor’s Instagram account. Although it is pretty obvious he’s bought hundreds of thousands of followers, every post has hundreds of mindlessly positive comments, which he then responds to each one with something mindlessly positive. Literally not one comment that has any kind of substance/humanity to it. Could he be faking/buying his own comments?

[close]

100%

[close]

I think so too. There was an "influencer" account I used to follow - the guy posted cool interior photos or his house, and fits  - and within 10 minutes of every post he'd have 30-40 comments from similar "influencer" accounts. Similar absent minded comments on every post, and he'd reply back with some generic thank you. Seems like a good scam he was running though, as it didn't seem to obvious he was fuckin with bots/automation.

[close]

I think a lot of this is "instagram pods." Basically groups you join (DMs or Facebook groups or whatever), and every time a pod member posts something, everyone else will go and like/comment on it. It's really weird and popular with Instagram photography. Example.

'Staying on' on social media seems like too much fucking work. So glad I never got wrapped up in that shit.