Have you ever been drawn to an advertised product when reviews and comments were all positive, with a good user experience, and a large number of views?
You have most likely been tricked into content that has been boosted with fake engagement.
Surfshark has revealed the true cost of fake popularity on social media, showing how genuine public interest can be overshadowed by fake engagement for just $1.40, and warns that views, comments, or followers do not confirm content legitimacy.
Tomas Stamulis, chief security officer at Surfshark, explains that the primary issue is not the low cost of fake engagement itself, but rather our own naive attitude and lack of skepticism when browsing online. We often interact with and plainly trust ads or pages without recognizing them as potential scams because our mindset is not yet set to filter content and actively search for identifiers that verify legitimacy.
Surfshark’s analysis shows a clear pattern that fake views on social media posts are the cheapest form of engagement across all analyzed platforms. Prices range from $1.40 per 1 000 views on TikTok to $6.70 per 1 000 views on YouTube.
By contrast, comments are the most expensive form of fake engagement on social media. Based on the available data, the average price for 1 000 comments was lowest on YouTube at $93, followed by Instagram at $104, TikTok at $140, and Facebook at $287.
“Views can be easily accomplished by bots and do not need a trusted account or human interaction to ensure post uniqueness. If the platform removes bots, the number of views is not affected. On the other hand, comments are opposite. If a fake account is removed, the comment also disappears,” says Stamulis.
According to Stamulis, social media spam filters constantly scan for bot interactions and comments. For this reason, AI, combined with human input, is needed to ensure uniqueness. As a result, when encountering high engagement and only positive comments, we should approach it with skepticism and carefully verify the legitimacy of the advertiser or product.
Scammers can fake followers or reposts to trick you
Study shows that shares, reposts, and retweets tend to be the second-most expensive form of fake engagement. TikTok is the most expensive platform on which to purchase fake shares, at $68 per 1 000, followed by Instagram and Facebook at $37 and X at $27. YouTube is an outlier, with shares costing only $17 per 1 000.
Followers and subscribers are also relatively inexpensive to purchase. The advertised price for 1 000 fake followers ranges from $14 to $20 on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and X. YouTube is a clear outlier, with 1 000 artificial subscribers costing $78 — more than four times the average price of followers on the other four platforms.
“Large amounts of followers are often considered as the page or person has genuine public interest. However, you would be surprised if you checked the actual list who follow or share the content of some pages. They have rows of ghost accounts, bots with generated usernames, and purchased profiles that have never watched a single second of the content they supposedly endorse,” says Stamulis.
Stamulis shares some tips on how to verify ads or page legitimacy:
- Check the follower-to-engagement ratio. A legitimate account should have around 1% to 5% or total followers as likes. If the account has 500 000 followers, but it gets 200 likes, something is not OK.
- Check the actual comments section. Phrases like “Great content!”, “Love this!”, “Amazing post” most likely are fake. Comments posted within the same narrow time window and have similar phrasing can be flagged as fake.
- Check the growth history. There are designated tools to check the growth of the account. Sudden spikes in growth can suggest the page has fake engagement.
- Analyse followers. Review 10 to 20 profiles. Bot accounts tend to have similar username formats, account creation dates around the same period, and follow many accounts with few friends.