How do you spot fake 'likes' online?

How do you spot fake likes online?

Is he/she really as popular as they appear?



Likes are a good measure of popularity but...

Facebook likes, Instagram and Twitter followers are one of the standards we can judge how popular a person is online. With the increase of focus on time spent online as well as a year by year increase in online advertising budgets

But just like how 'models' can use MeituPic to make their features sharper, eyes bigger or their skin clearer, some people are 'padding' their online presence with fake likes to make it seem like they are more popular than they are. Here's some tips on how to spot them. Keep it in mind just one or two of these doesn't mean that the followers/likes are fake, but it definitely makes it way more suspicious!

Facebook



A sudden spike in followers, then a flatline

This is very symptomatic of fake likes - a sharp spike then a flatline usually means the likes were purchased from a like farm. There's nothing wrong with paying for proper exposure through Facebook ads, but taking a shortcut like this (buying fake followers to increase your numbers) will actually hurt your page - the more fake followers you have, the less real followers will actually see your content.

The Facebook News feed algorithm works like this - it shows content to a few people first, and if it is liked/commented, it is then shown to more. That's why although you might have liked hundreds of pages, you only see posts from a select few, and it tends to be the better posts.



Low page "Talking About This"

1,800+ likes, but only 3 people 'Talking About This'? That's less than 0.2% of people engaged with the page! However this in itself doesn't mean the likes are fake, the person might just be boring...

If the person has bought fake likes, those accounts serve only to boost the numbers - they don't actually "see the posts" or interact with the page. The following things (but not limited to these) count towards 'Talking About This' of a page

• like a page
• post on the page wall
• like/comment on or share a post
• mention the page in a post / tag the page in a photo
• check in on a page (for those with addresses defined)

Dodgy followers/page fans with low/distinct activity

This page has 100,000+ likes. But a quick look at those that liked some recent posts show a lot of users have no personal images, no picture, or don't show their real profile pictures (cartoon character, pet etc).

In addition, their profiles are only sharing news or political/commercial image flyers.

A low number of friends on the individual profiles of page fans is also reason to suspect - remember, Malaysians have one of the highest number of Facebook friends in the world.

Instagram

"When you walk into a brand and you say 'what about her, what about him?' they now ask 'how many followers do they have?' " said Ivan Bart, senior vice president and managing director of IMG Models. - The Wall Street Journal



Super Obvious - Followed by Fan Buying Services

These are the followers from the Instagram account of someone who has "17,000 followers". She is followed by Instagram user "BUYFANS" who offers 'cheap followers and likes'. It's a bit too obvious la.



Followers with no profile pictures / no posts

If the person has many Instagram followers without profile pictures, and no posts and those accounts are followed by very few people...it's quite likely they are fake followers. There are some real followers here in this screenshot.



Irrelevant / spammy comments

Not only followers can be bought, likes and comments can be bought too. If you see that the comments section is too irrelevant or spammy, there's a high chance that the comments are a creation of a spambot, not from actual users.

 

TL;DR