What actually happens when we buy Instagram followers?

Do you want to push your Instagram account a little and buy a few thousand Instagram followers? In fact, that’s a terrible idea! We explain what happens when you get fake followers.

If you follow companies and influencers with thousands of followers on Instagram, it can be frustrating when your own number of followers is much lower.

Because everyone knows: Interesting collaborations or lucrative business only start with a large number of followers. It can be tempting to buy a few Instagram followers.

In fact, there are plenty of websites out there that sell just that. For example, you can buy 5,000 Instagram followers for around 40 US dollars. This is cheap and can grow your profile quickly. But what sounds very good in theory is a terrible idea in practice.

Buy Instagram followers: that’s behind it

Because who are the followers that you are buying?

As a rule, the companies that offer fake followers rent servers in data centers and can thus create different Instagram profiles using different IP addresses. In this way you can quickly create thousands of automated profiles that are then ready to use.

At first glance, they don’t stand out as fake because they were created from different locations.

For example, if you buy 5,000 followers through such a service, a boot will ensure that 5,000 people follow you on Instagram. It usually takes a maximum of one day for all new followers to appear on your profile.

Of course, that looks very good at first. But in the long run you will end up with a lot of problems that in the end can actually do you more harm than good.

Court Says Buying Instagram Followers Is Illegal

First and foremost, you have to be clear: Buying Instagram followers not only violates the terms and conditions of all social media platforms. This is also illegal in UK.

The Stuttgart Regional Court decided that the practice was anti-competitive. Incidentally, this does not only apply to fake followers, but also to bought likes or comments. But beyond that, you also damage your own social media presence.

Fake followers quickly exposed

The followers bought usually do not stand up to closer scrutiny. Various self-experiment by social media experts have shown that you usually buy empty profiles.

Often the accounts have no profile photos at all and rarely more than four posts on their own profiles. On the other hand, they then follow 5,000 or 7,000 Instagram accounts.

If the purchased Instagram followers leave comments at all (usually they don’t), these are suspicious at first glance. Because they are so generic and say so little about your posts that real users quickly recognize this as a scam.

And then you have the next problem. Who wants to follow a profile with fake followers? In doing so, you are already blocking the chance that real fans will follow you.

If you are also really interested in feedback from your fans, in customer opinions or real exchange, you will of course not receive that either. At the same time, you also negatively influence the algorithm of your posts.

Instagram algorithm penalizes profiles with bought followers

Because if you post a new photo on Instagram, for example, the algorithm does not show it to all of your followers at once.

Instead, a small group first sees them. If it reacts positively, with lots of likes or comments, the algorithm sees “aha, this is an interesting post” and then shows it to more users accordingly.

Ideally, you get so many interactions together that your post ends up on the Explore page. The opposite happens with wrong followers.

If it is then revealed that you have worked with bought followers, this is also damage to your image that is difficult to repair. So you’re really doing yourself a disservice by buying Instagram followers.

Instagram followers aren’t everything

So buying Instagram followers is really not worth it. It also hasn’t been the top success metric in a while. Interactions, i.e. real exchanges between you and your followers, have become much more meaningful. Because that shows a committed community and a real dialogue.

That is why micro-influencers are now very popular for collaborations with companies. Because they may not have that many followers. In return, however, they usually reach a very specific target group and have very active fans. Companies value this much more than the pure number of followers.

So instead of buying fake followers, you should invest the time in good social media posts. And if you want a push for your profile, there is also an effective (and legal) method: advertise.

Fake followers not only on Instagram

Of course, people don’t just buy followers on Instagram. The same thing happens on Face book, YouTube, and even spottily. But the effects are similar.

On spottily, for example, you can buy plays, i.e. how often a song is listened to. Similar to the views on YouTube, someone has to listen to a song for at least 30 seconds for it to count as a play. The purchased accounts can just manage that.

But the spottily algorithm also evaluates whether someone is saving the song or adding it to their own playlist. Purchased profiles don’t do that. Similar to Instagram, but it signals to the spottily algorithm: This is a really bad song.

Accordingly, the algorithm decides not to show your song to a wider audience.

So in the end, no real person has listened to your music, and spottily will also think you’re a bad musician, which further reduces your chances of success.

If you really want to be successful on social media, the same applies as everywhere else: You don’t achieve this through trickery, but primarily through hard, honest work.