HypeAuditior, an AI-powered Instagram and YouTube analytics tool, has conducted a research that reveals more than half of Malaysia’s influencers purchase ingenuine followers and engagements on Instagram as a means to attract brand sponsors.
Paying social media platforms to increase following and engagements is a common practice by businesses and influencers to reach out to a wider audience, however HypeAuditor claims that these influencers have used artificial means to do that, such as using services to purchase a bulk of followers and comments on specific postings, moreover these purchased followers mostly consist bots, fake and stolen accounts.
This fraudulent act causes brands to lose their returns of investments and reach for compensating the influencer to promote their business, HypeAuditor points out almost 10% of mega influencers and celebrities artificially inflate their numbers, while the most fraud-free influencer group range within 1K-5K followers.
Artificially inflating followers on Instagram is strictly prohibited by Instagram and can eventually lead to account closure if you breach the terms, influencers and content creators who post their work on Instagram should refrain from using such services but rather, utilize Instagram’s official business or creator account to genuinely boost their reach.
For more information, you can read up on HypeAuditor’s report in the source link.