B3ta’s ‘ginger Führer’ Rob Manuel on how laughably easy it is to exploit social media, adding fake likes and followers for cash:
A simple search on eBay for “twitter followers” brought us to a website I’m going to slightly disguise because I don’t want to directly promote their services.These people offer all sorts of services, including buying 100,000 Twitter followers for the measly sum of £25. There’s also deals for Facebook, and Youtube, and promises that they’ll even get you traffic for Google Plus (coming soon).
READ ON: I bought 90,000 Twitter followers for my sadly lamented dead cat for £25 (Rob Manuel, usvsth3m)
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This practice is ancient and also pointless. They are just fake bot accounts so any message you want to communicate will get lost.
Missing the point. It’s about sites pretending to be more popular than they are by buying fake followers and likes.
There’s missing the point and there’s that first post. Jeez.
I’m not missing the point. Websites and bands/djs buy likes to look more popular but in the process shoot themselves in the foot by destroying their ability to reach people who actually care.
Sorry, do you mean that the bots actually block the messages and promotion from getting the real life fans?
I don’t understand the logic:
If you have say 5,000, and you promote something via your social media – the 5,000 fans get to read it.
Otr you have 5,000 real likes from real fans and 10,000 fake likes from bots, and you promote something…surely the 5,000 real fans still get to read it?
I think its a stupid practice, which in turn makes you look a bit disreputable, but how does ‘destroy their ability to reach people who actually care’.?
With Facebook’s algorithm only about 10% of your fans get to see your post unless your pay them to ‘promote’ it, or it gets lots of engagement from like and comments (i.e. going ‘viral’). Only the fake likes could end up seeing the post.
I get this. The music industry for example is so desperate to stay relevant they will buy social media tags. Some artists on souncloud have even blocked comments altogether because of this nonsense. Here is a gorgeous mix of a great song… for free. https://soundcloud.com/judahofficial/london-grammar-strong-judah-remix
When is London Grammar back in Ireland? North or South is good for me.
https://www.twitteraudit.com/realbarryegan
Amazing. This should be an article all to itself.
Clever tool.
Used it on our Twitter account….
Faken Identities = 10
We will find them.
Vertel me wie ik ben, etc.
Interesting research though not surprising. Exposes both the warped ambition for fame and popularity in our society plus the domino effect, i.e. ‘If that amount of people like this then perhaps I should too?!’
You can’t blame a marketing department for purchasing likes if they want to achieve this perception of their brand. All advertising and PR is a form of hoodwinking. We all know that email scams are successful with a small percentage of their market – likewise buying likes will achieve some return. Doesn’t excuse deception but try legislating what is now commonly accepted marketing tactics!
Lemme try and understand this
on eBay; I can buy 100,000 followers?
For the price of a round of Aftershocks …
And I don’t have’ta follow anyone back?
Sur that’s a great gag