Purchased fans on Facebook and fake followers on Instagram are not a new phenomenon - fake product reviews in online shops are also a long-known problem. However, the prevailing opinion is that fakes are useless and just a waste of money. We ask: Is this true?
Likes: more than the new currency on the web
Followers have become a kind of currency, and not just on Instagram. If you want to get started as an influencer and apply to an agency, you really need to have a lot of fans. After all, companies that have products skilfully placed by influencers want to do good business. Providers who offer fake followers also do "good business". Also on offer: fake likes for Facebook pages, retweets on Twitter, comments and Google and online shop ratings. But is this really just a marginal phenomenon, as many claim, or is buying fake likes not only common practice, but perhaps even indispensable in today's online marketing? A tough hypothesis that we want to illustrate using various examples from psychology.
"Just don't buy any fake fans"
If you use the search engine of your choice with the search term "buy Facebook fans", the SERPs display various providers on the one hand and a number of blogs and platforms on the other, which generally advise against buying fake likes and comments without reservation. However, it seems that many people are not swayed by this advice (we will clarify later whether this advice is wise or not), as there are corresponding studies that speak a clear language and refute this opinion.
SRF Data analysed 115 major Instagram influencers for fake followers in 2017, for example. An algorithm was used that took into account various clues determined in advance by the researchers. The result:
"Apparently all influencers have a certain proportion of fake followers," writes SRF in an article on its website.
The researchers found that the actual proportion of fake followers on Instagram is usually between 5 and 25 % - there are also outliers with well over 25 %. It seems that the higher the number of followers, the higher the proportion of fakes. When asked about this topic, many influencers (and their agencies) said that they didn't know where these fakes came from and that it was seen as a nuisance - after all, someone else could buy fakes for any profile.
Recognising fake fans? Not so easy (anymore)!
Many opponents of fakes argue that fake profiles can be recognised straight away, or at the latest with the help of free online tools. Such tools analyse the country of origin of the profiles, for example. If most of the fans of a German Facebook page are profiles from India, Bangladesh or other non-German-speaking countries, it is likely that a lot of shopping has been done. The second clue is the interaction: if a page or profile has a lot of likes but the interaction is very low, this should seem strange.
The "problem": With the providers of fake fans and followers, you can choose which country the profiles should come from (i.e. also from Germany) and also buy the interaction at the same time. Post likes, shares or retweets, comments and the like: everything is available - and at ridiculously low prices. The obvious indications of fake fans can therefore be cancelled out to a certain extent.
But why is this market flourishing? Are buyers really only interested in boosting their own ego by claiming to have a lot of reach, or is there more to it than that?
The power of the masses
In his study "Mass Psychology and Ego Analysis", Sigmund Freud noted that people adapt their behaviour and opinions to the environment in which they find themselves. This means that if a group of people builds up pressure, we could change our personal attitude and therefore also our behaviour in order to avoid experiencing social isolation.
Another example of the power of the group is the conformity experiment, the results of which were published by the Polish-American Gestalt psychologist and pioneer of social psychology Solomon Asch in 1951. With this study, which was repeated several times in various forms over the following decades, he proved that a person knowingly deviates from a correct answer just to accept the opinion of the group around them. It also showed that a larger group generates more conformity than a smaller community.
Pressure to conform and social media
The people cavorting on social media platforms also form a community that surrounds us and is capable of guiding our thoughts and actions. Just as in the analogue world, there is a desire for acceptance and group affiliation on the internet. As fake likes for posts, pages or profiles create a kind of "peer pressure", real likes and real interaction materialise more quickly than without purchased "opinions".
Study shows: "I like it when you like it!"
In 2012, Peter Michael Bak and Thomas Keßler from the Fresenius University of Applied Sciences in Cologne published the results of the study "I like it, if you like it! Conformity effects on Facebook". In addition to the above-mentioned conformity experiment by Solomon Asch, the study is also based on the theory of the spiral of silence by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, professor of communication science and pioneer of demoscopy in Germany. This theory of public opinion states that people are more likely to speak out on a topic if their own opinion does not contradict the prevailing majority opinion.
Bak and Keßler conducted their experiment with 657 test subjects who use Facebook in their free time - in other words, normal users and not social media experts who are familiar with certain backgrounds. The test subjects were divided into five groups according to various criteria such as intensity of use. In three of these five groups, Facebook likes were manipulated (purchased). The test subjects' task was to indicate on a scale how much they liked a picture posted on Facebook.
The result of the study was clear: the more likes a picture had, the more positively it was rated by the test subjects. The number of likes therefore has a direct effect on the tendency to conform and the willingness to like, comment on and access content and share it with friends.
Conformity principle also relevant for online shopping
A study by the industry association bitkom found that customer reviews are the most important criterion for online shopping decisions. However, experts consider the majority of online reviews to be questionable. The NRW consumer advice centre speaks of 98 percent of all reviews in online shops, according to a report on the website of the "ARD Fact Finder" on manipulated customer reviews. Not only comments for Amazon are traded:
Purchased reviews on TripAdvisor, Holidaycheck, eBay and Google are also very popular. Despite a number of indicators and technical tools for identifying fake reviews, it is more or less impossible to make a clear distinction.
Criminal law & fake reviews
Fake reviews are considered misleading advertising and are therefore punishable by law, but because it is usually impossible to prove who bought the reviews (if it comes out at all), it is also difficult to bring charges. In principle, any internet user can buy ratings, likes or anything else for any website.
Conclusion
Once you break out of the cage of your own opinion and world view, which is often just as customised as that of the target group animated by fake likes and ratings, the real illusory world opens up to you: bought comments, fake likes and paid conversion are reality and common practice in online marketing. And we go one step further: without utilising the psychological effects of these fakes, it will in many cases be difficult to establish yourself in an online market that is (to a very large extent) full of lies.
