“Popularity on social media is increasingly becoming a commodity, rather than an indicator of genuine public interest.” This forceful statement opens the study just published by Surfshark, which examines the very real, though not always acknowledged, phenomenon of services that sell social media engagement.
And as we will see, the conclusions are very, very striking.
The study analyzes the cost of fake social media engagement. To do so, the authors compiled pricing data from websites that sell artificial likes, shares, followers, views, and comments.
Specifically, Surfshark’s report examines the cost of generating these fake metrics (per 1,000 interactions) on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, X, Facebook, and YouTube, and uncovers some interesting findings, such as the major differences in the cost of each type of interaction. In this regard, plays and views are the cheapest interactions to manipulate. It can cost as little as $1.40 per 1,000 views on TikTok, although that price can rise to $6.70 if you want to get them on YouTube.
Meanwhile, buying 1,000 followers ranges from $14 to $20 on most networks (with YouTube as the exception, where it climbs to $78). Likes fall within a similar range, from $10 to $25. Finally, comments are the most expensive type of interaction to fake, perhaps due to platforms’ anti-spam controls. They range from $93 on YouTube to $287 on Facebook per 1,000 comments.
It will not come as news if I say that the social media ecosystem is what gives the biggest headaches to all of us working in the digital space.
Year after year, the credibility of social media has been in free fall, due to all kinds of scandals, from severe penalties imposed by regulators to the ever-growing presence of false content, self-serving hoaxes, and, of course, the increasing spread of AI slop.
So the only thing missing was for users to no longer be able to trust the like or subscriber metrics of their favorite influencer.
The truth is that Surfshark’s data makes it clear just how cheap it is to buy success on social media, and it offers yet another reason not to interpret those figures as automatic proof of real popularity.
In addition, buying these kinds of indicators can create added risks for users, as we saw quite some time ago when Elon Musk decided to change the criteria for assigning account verifications. The change devalued the prestige of the badge as an immediate sign of authenticity, since it was no longer reserved for the verification system previously in place.
In the case addressed by the study, we can assume that when people see an account with thousands of followers and views, the average user automatically tends to assume that the content or product is legitimate, or at least that it has enough followers, views, or likes to have earned that legitimacy. That appearance of prestige, bought at bargain-basement prices, can even serve as a hook for commercial scams, fictional crowdfunding projects, and disinformation campaigns.
To avoid falling for the deception, users can take some steps (although, honestly, it is rather naive to think they actually will): review the follower-to-engagement ratio of an account, analyze comments for generic and repetitive phrases such as “Great post!” published within the same time frame, or watch for sudden spikes of thousands of followers on an account.
In the end, these kinds of metrics (vanity metrics, we might say) are easy to inflate. Learning to look beyond the numbers is essential for navigating wisely today.
Image: ChatGPT
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