Under the Influence- How to Fake Your Way Into Getting Rich on Instagram

by Trey Ratcliff

  Please understand that I am not using this example to “show off,” but instead to illustrate that I have significant and first-hand authority not only observing, but participating in, the Instagram economy. Just as you can trade Euros or Yuan for the US Dollar, you can now in essence trade Instagram followers, likes, and comments for real money.

  People need to believe in the veracity of a currency for it to have any utility in an economy. It’s impossible to have agreements, do business, or make any progress if nobody trusts the framework. If you could photocopy $100 bills and spend them freely, you could contribute to destabilizing an economy. If there are a million people doing it, no rational person would believe in the strength of the currency.

  There are billions of dollars flowing into Influencers on social networks. On Instagram alone, brands spent $2 billion in Influencer sponsorship in 2017. That figure is expected to grow to $10 billion by 2020.20 Brands are spending some of this money on Influencers who are using counterfeit currency—fake followers, likes, and comments. Because fraudulent Influencers are earning money, other Influencers are incentivized to further partake in this bad behavior. This feedback mechanism threatens to destabilize the entire system.

  It may seem like I have a hidden personal motive for uncovering Influencer fraud, since it’s true that I have made some lucrative deals with major brands as an Influencer myself over the years. It could be perceived that I’m defending my turf because these fakes are jeopardizing my business. But in fact, Influencer deals are a minor (albeit enjoyable) part of my fine art business revenue, accounting for less than 10% of my revenue pie chart. So, I don’t mind taking the heat. Besides, who wants to live in a world where many of the numbers you rely upon have no basis in reality? Not me.

  The follower, the like, and the comment are becoming as important as the meter, the hour, and the pound for measuring and making agreements. In Instagram’s case, if you can’t trust any of its metrics, how can anyone believe what they see, make agreements, and have a trusted economic exchange on the platform?

  I started meeting more and more of these “Instagram Influencers” in real life at luxury travel destinations, five-star hotels, banquets, yacht parties, and the like. Something seemed a bit off with some of them. When I met some of these Instagram Influencers, there was occasionally a hollowness, a lacking, a missing of the gravitas that one might expect from someone with experience engaging with tens of thousands of people on a daily basis.

  Out of curiosity, I looked into their follower counts and many exceeded mine even though they had been on Instagram for a fraction of the time. Similarly, engagement (likes and comments) seemed out of mathematical proportion. Curious.

  So how did these Influencers grow such big audiences so quickly, I wondered?

  To find out, I spoke with a variety of legitimate Influencers about these sorts of scams. One of them was Johnny Jet (@johnnyjet), travel blogger from www.JohnnyJet.com. He told me what I already suspected, which is that some of these “successful” Influencers are buying their engagement. Jet said, “I do know people who have bought followers, likes and comments, and I think it sucks. It worked for some early adopters; they essentially followed the advice ‘fake it until you make it.’ But it’s going to bite most scammers, as both users and brands are getting savvier. So, while it may have worked for them in the short-term, it won’t in the long-term.” He said he personally knows someone that he suspects “has bought followers and comments, and they’re traveling the world in style, thanks to fake engagement.”

  When I talked to the famous photographer Lindsay Adler about this topic, she also knew something was up. She said, “I absolutely know people that have purchased their Instagram following, and I was dismayed because they used these fake followers to convince brands of their ‘influence.’ Times are certainly changing—I hope!—but a lot of brands still look purely at numbers as a way to select people to work with. It was more than a bit questionable when this person attracted brands with their following, and then suddenly lost 30% of their followers in a day, when Instagram did a purge of bots. Unfortunately, it seemed that the brands didn’t notice or didn’t care.”

  Lauren Bath (@laurenepbath), the well-known Australian Instagrammer with over 450,000 followers, said she knows many people who buy followers to defraud big brands. “I have a lot of proof that a scary number of users, businesses, and Influencers are hacking the system in one way or another.” She also said she knows of many people who bought hundreds of thousands of followers a long time ago and then stopped. Of people who buy followers, she said, “I’d say that a large percentage of working Influencers, that are directly benefiting from businesses, are cheating. The worst is the brands that know their Influencers are cheating but are prepared to look the other way because it makes their bottom line look better. And yes, I have first-hand information about this happening.”

  I asked Liz Carlson (@youngadventuress), another well-known Travel Influencer, if she knew anyone on Instagram who buys followers/comments/likes. She said, “Yes, I know of a lot of people that do that and suspect many more. I think it’s really shit. You can’t fake genuine influence, and it damages everyone when you don’t organically build a community and then sell yourself as an Influencer. You’re defrauding the brands you’re working with and deceiving the real followers that you do have.”

  I take my hat off to the New York Times for recently publishing a well-researched, in-depth article, The Follower Factory, about people who buy Twitter followers. The article describes how people from all walks of life, including, for example, politicians, buy fake followers to pad their numbers and make it appear as if they have significant authority or extreme fame.21

  Many creatives jump on Instagram because they are told they must have a social media presence to promote their businesses. They see that their competitors are ahead by tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of followers, and it leaves them feeling hopeless. They feel it’s too late to even get started.

  I see desperation. They are putting in a lot of time and working hard to create great content yet it seems they can’t grow their following organically fast enough to keep up. Their wedding photography business, hair salon, yoga studio, bakery, boutique B&B, or their band is spinning its wheels. Meanwhile, the duplicitous thrive.

  Top Influencers who fraudulently buy their popularity create an illusion of success that causes a tremendous amount of anxiety for millions of “normal” people on Instagram—especially those who have their own business to promote and who are using legitimate means to do so. These normal Instagram users are playing by the rules—at least as they see them—and are often unaware that the game is rigged. So, naturally, people that play by the rules are flummoxed by how some of these other people are so successful. This causes a deleterious emotional impact on those people who believe that what they see is real and that the rewards are based on merit.

  Fakes Are on All Platforms

  Although I’ve been picking on Instagram, this dynamic isn’t limited to a single platform. Many people are surprised when they discover that anyone can buy fake engagement numbers on any and all social platforms. Instagram is not the only social media platform where its users can mislead—and be misled. Any social media “currency” metric you see may be inflated—from followers, to likes, to comments, to retweets or reblogs, to shares … you get the idea.

  For example, in my testing, I discovered I could buy almost anything I wanted, on any platform.

  This phenomenon isn’t just restricted to traditional social media sites, although that’s what we’re focusing on here. Engagement metrics can also be bought to bolster accounts or business on other online tools, such as ratings on the iTunes App Store to reviews on Yelp.

  Basically, anything that can be counted online can be faked. In this book, we’ll focus on Instagram to keep things simple. Instagram is also one of the most popular games in town, and the acceleration of money flowing into the ecosystem makes
it one of the most important social locations for Fortune 500 companies with cash burning a hole in their pockets.

  What’s Wrong with Purchased Followers?

  Some people may think purchasing followers isn’t such a big deal. It’s just a shortcut to the same place. However, aside from the ethical considerations, there are monetary implications. For example, a brand who’s investing in an Influencer because they think the Influencer has 500,000 real followers won’t actually be getting that same “bang for their buck” if those followers are fake.

  Purchased followers are not valuable to advertisers because they aren’t real people. They are non-human bots running as scripts on a computer somewhere.

  Case Study: The Mega-hit Band Threatin

  If it’s still not obvious why purchased followers/likes/comments/YouTube plays/etc. are worthless, there was a recent article about a new band, Threatin, that illustrates the point quite plainly. For publicity, the band shot some videos at home, then doctored those videos to look like they were recorded during live performances.

  Threatin then purchased followers, likes, comments, and YouTube plays for these videos. With all of this social media engagement, Threatin looked like a popular up-and-coming band. Based on their apparent online popularity, Threatin then was booked for a big concert tour overseas.22

  This “band” bought likes, comments, and YouTube plays, before having a concert in London. No actual humans appeared, despite claims of high ticket sales and lots of RSVPs on their Facebook event.23

  To keep up the ruse, they even faked the ticket sales.

  In the end, only the tour manager showed up to see the concert.

  Remember that empty hall when many “Influencers” claim that their purchased followers are simply a shortcut to getting real followers. Bought followers are not real. They are vapor.

  Other Instagram Scams

  A quick side note: there are many other types of scams on Instagram and other social platforms. Unscrupulous users may try to trick you into:

  Paying them money

  Entering spurious contests

  Sending them nude photos, then blackmailing you

  Giving up valuable personal information to hijack your account

  Hiring fake escorts

  Anything else they think you’ll do that might allow them to extract money from you

  I think a lot of these scams are very obviously scams, and therefore, not quite as interesting to discuss.

  A quick rule of thumb for the uninitiated: don’t fall for any of the scams I just listed above. Also, don’t give money to random strangers on the Internet. There’s a reason these scammers are still out there—it’s because these scams are lucrative, and people fall for them. Don’t let yourself be taken advantage of.

  Why This Is Important Now: Backlash Against Instagram

  Social entropy is a measure of the natural decay inside of a social system. Attorney Nicole Shanahan has used the phrase to describe a growing trend of public loss of trust in social institutions.24 We can see social entropy occurring in many arenas, as people continue to lose trust in constructs like government, lawyers, marriage, corporations, and many other structures we deal with on a regular basis.

  Even if you are an avid social network user, you probably have a bit less faith in the social media framework than you did in the beginning. The more you use it, the more you see it has its flaws.

  Amidst the tech literati, there is also a growing negativity around Instagram and many social networks.

  Leo Laporte, host of The Tech Guy and TWiT.TV, sent me an email saying that he’s disconnected completely from social media. In it, he explained, “I recently deactivated my Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts. I considered keeping Instagram because I do enjoy the images, but I decided not to, because of all the things you mention. I also did not like the ads in the feed. Most of all, I don’t want to support Facebook.”

  It’s not just the negative and poisonous comments that drive people off these platforms, but many see it as a breeding ground for the worst aspects of human nature. Laporte went on to say, “I am increasingly of the opinion that social media is a malign influence on us all. I prefer to put my pictures on my blog, Smugmug, [or] Flickr—where photos come first.”

  Each month, I have more clever high-tech friends leaving these networks. They may be the canaries in the coal mine.

  I firmly believe that we can use social networks to do great things in the world. Humans are amazing at cooperating to accomplish great things. Unfortunately, these same tools can also allow us to do terrible things.

  Why Has Nobody Written This Book Before? (Or: Retribution-bots and Revenge-bots)

  Why hasn’t anyone written a book quite like this before, and why aren’t people talking about this issue if it’s as widespread as I claim?

  The main reason none of the major players have spoken up is simple. Most people who know about this stuff derive the majority of their income from their Instagram followings, and they don’t want to threaten that revenue stream. And I’m not just talking about people who are earning their income fraudulently. A lot of legitimate users I spoke with asked me not to quote them in the book because of the fear of retribution.

  What do I mean by retribution? Let me explain. About a year ago, one brave Instagrammer did attempt an exposé of this underground black market. Retaliation was swift. The bots and fraudulent networks turned on her and ruined her Instagram account by adding a massive number of fake followers. These bad actors spread many lies about her, ruining any future possible Influencer deals for her. Will the same happen to me? Without a doubt! I expect my account to get trashed. But I don’t depend on my Instagram for my life so I don’t mind. I’m sure people will spread all kinds of lies about me.

  I’ve included my smooth organic follower growth chart below, as a baseline, to compare with any future spikes or dips that will likely be caused by revenge-bots. I hypothesize that they will try anything to discredit me, in order to deflect from the main issue—that there’s a black market for engagement metrics on Instagram and other social media platforms. Such responses from retribution-bots and upset people are expected, especially considering how much money is at stake. People like me, who practice the subtle art of not giving a f*ck, are dangerous to the status quo.

  This shows my smooth follower growth over time as opposed to big jumps you will often see with scammers. Socialblade.com is often changing its website, and historical data may not be available. Source: Socialblade.com

  For the time being, it’s up to all of us to stay vigilant to keep the bots and fake Influencer population under control.

  Chapter 3

  The Inside Scoop (Or: How to Buy Your Way to Fake Internet Fame)

  “Lies are the social equivalent of toxic waste: Everyone is potentially harmed by their spread.”

  — Sam Harris

  Last year was the year of “fake news.” Perhaps this is the year of “fake followers.”

  The tricks that fake Influencers employ include, but are not limited to, buying followers, buying likes, buying comments, podding, follow/unfollow schemes, buying video/story plays, and beyond. I’ll explain how all that works, but no matter the tactic or latest tool, the effect of the con is the same. I expose 99% of the tricks fake Influencers are using on Instagram and other social platforms to commit fraud. I wish I could claim I knew 100% of the tactics, but I think these ne’er-do-wells probably have a few more tricks up their sleeves I don’t know about yet.

  In this chapter, I’ll walk you through how, exactly, these fraudulent Instagram Influencers are plying their trade. Where do they go to trade for followers, likes, and comments? How do they actually do it, and how much does it cost? Can they do it for free?

  My Experiment: I Built a Fake Influencer Account

  For testing (and a bit of hilarity), I started a new Instagram account for one of my assistants, Tane Gent, who is a good sport. His first na
me is pronounced “TahnAY,” if you were wondering. It’s a Maori name.

  Anyway, I started this risible Instagram account, @genttravel, to test how quickly we could grow a significant following by mimicking the methods I suspected people were using to mislead their followers and potential brand sponsors. To be more scientific, I also started a second, control account, @genttravelnz, at the same time. I posted the exact same photos, but only using legitimate methods, to grow engagement organically. That way, we could compare the results of each account to determine what differences, if any, we observed between the accounts.

  The idea of the experiment was to compare and contrast the follower numbers for the two accounts over time and, if the cheater was successful in getting over 100K followers, to approach agencies and brands to see if they could spot the fake.

  Two mostly identical accounts. On left account, we bought followers, likes, and comments. In our research, we were able to buy 30,000 followers for as little as $40 and 500 custom comments for $3.99.

  How did we do it? Read on to find out.

  Step 1: Open the Account and Make Some Content

  As luck would have it, besides being a very capable assistant, Tane is a good-looking kid. I have about a thousand photos of him taken in cool places all over the world. We filled his accounts with a bunch of photos of him in demigod mode. We would often include silly, self-important captions, often referencing brands, like, “I’m not often on the open seas, but when I am, I am on million-dollar yachts hosted by Blue Azure,” and other deep thoughts in this vein. I actually had a little too much fun creating this fake persona.