(Hypebot) — Pretty much every kind of social media capital is available for sale these days, and followers are no exception. Surprisingly, however, the very people whom you would think didn’t need to purchase fake fans have, for one reason or another, accrued vast swathes of these artificial followers.
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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
We all know that we can buy just about any kind of signs of social authority these days. Likes, streams, views – yep, they’re for sale. So are followers, and you’d be surprised just how many fake followers some of the biggest music celebrities actually have.
ICMP in London looked at a number of available apps online to determine just how many fake followers are out there. They used IG Audit to look at Instagram, and Sparktoro’s Fake Follower tool to look at Twitter, and the results are eye-opening. Take a look.
- BTS 47% fake followers on Instagram and Twitter
- Taylor Swift 46%
- Ariana Grande 46%
- Miley Cyrus 45%
- Katy Perry 44%
- Marshmello 43%
- Jennifer Lopez 45%
- Nikki Manaj 39%
- Shakira 37%
- Drake 36%
- Ed Sheeran 35%
And the list goes on and on. Keep in mind that each of the above has followers on both platforms in the 10’s of millions, and in some cases, even the 100’s of millions. It doesn’t do you much good if a third to a half of them are fake though.
Or does it? There is such a thing as “social authority” where the more likes, comments, followers, views you have, the more people think you’re worth looking at, regardless of the content that you post. All those followers may not be helpful though, since when we start to get into the millions it becomes counterproductive for promotion, although it’s probably a pretty good ego boost for the artist.
That being said, television and movie celebs and sports figures are no better and stacked up about the same as music people.
It just goes to show that you can’t believe any numbers that you see online. Like fake news, it’s fake data that takes our attention away from what we really should be concentrating on, and that’s how much value these people’s social media posts actually bring to our lives.
