We often marvel at the extensive followers celebs seem to have on social media. But we forget that many go to any extent to increase their follower count, even if it means buying fake followers.
Yes, there are multiple agencies that claim to increase the number of followers on any social media platform for some quick cash. But it is not just you and me who contemplate hiring the services of such agencies. It seems popular stars have also engaged in the cloak and dagger business of buying millions of followers.
TOI report of a research done by the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) claims that celebrities like Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Deepika Padukone have the maximum number of fake followers or ‘bots’ on their social media.
Reports claim that these Bollywood actresses are among the 10 celebrities who have maximum numbers of fake followers on Instagram. Deepika Padukone with around 37.9 million followers is at the sixth place on the fake followers’ list with a massive 48 per cent of followers that are bots.
Similarly, our ‘Desi Girl’ who boasts of 43.6 million followers is at the 10th place with 46 per cent of fake followers on the Facebook-owned photo-messaging app.
According to NY post, talk show host Ellen DeGeneres has 58 per cent of fake Instagram followers, followed by boy-band BTS coming with 48 per cent.
Kourtney Kardashian was third with 49 per cent, while Kim Kardashian and Khloe Kardashian both had 44 per cent of fake followers.
Katy Perry is also not far with 53 per cent of her 83.6 million fake Instagram followers.
“We took various ‘most successful’ and ‘most followed’ to build our list of celebrities across acting, sport, music, and TV personalities. We then filtered this by the number of followers to give ourselves a top 100 most followed list. We then ran their Instagram and Twitter handles through IG Audit and Sparktoro’s fake Twitter follower’s tool to measure what percentage of their following was actually real,” ICMP said in a statement.
Very recently a report suggested that PeeCee and Virat Kohli were ranked 19th and 23rd on ‘Instagram Rich List’ for charging Rs. 1.8 Crore and Rs. 1.3 Crore respectively for every post.
Considering how much celebs stand to gain for every post, it is understandable why buying fake followers is a trend. After all, that is when brands pay them the big bucks.
The ICMP report card is indeed a shocking one posing a question as to how far people can really go with their need for validation and popularity to monetize their account.