The Influencer Industry by Emily Hund

Author:Emily Hund
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2022-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

Fake Followers

In January 2018, the New York Times released an in-depth report about the rise of “fake followers” on social media.35 While bloggers and influencers had for years discussed unsavory practices related to boosting follower count,36 the Times report exposed the extensive ecosystem, or what they called a “black market,” that had developed to provide digital content creators, as well as journalists, politicians, and actors, with the “real” followers needed to become a bona fide influencer. The report focused on a company called Devumi, a Twitter bot supplier that promised, “Our followers look like any other followers and are always delivered naturally. The only way anyone will know is if you tell them.”37 But it revealed trends that pervaded social media.

The most obvious of these was the basic logic of the influencer economy: that being visible on social media, cultivating a following, and leveraging that into financial and social opportunities was necessary for professional success in the digital age. “You see a higher follower count, or a higher retweet count, and you assume this person is important, or this tweet was well received,” a founder of a search engine optimization company told the Times.38 “Everyone does it,” an actress said.39 It also revealed the lengths to which people would go to effectively participate in this system, sometimes spending thousands of dollars to boost their follower count. Caving to the influencer economy logic was not limited to aspiring influencers or struggling wannabes; the report exposed that established professionals such as the actor John Leguizamo, billionaire Dell Computer founder Michael Dell, and member of British Parliament Martha Lane Fox had purchased Devumi followers.

Most disturbingly, the Times report described how this underbelly of the influencer system threatened the privacy and well-being of countless people. Many of Devumi’s accounts for sale were actually facsimiles of unsuspecting users’ real online identities. Among others, the Times highlighted the case of a seventeen-year-old high school student whose name and likeness were stolen to create an account, available for sale by Devumi, that retweeted controversial and harmful content, including graphic pornography. Further, bot retailers like Devumi did not make the fake accounts themselves, but often purchased them from a “thriving global market” of wholesalers.40 In providing detailed analyses and graphics illustrating the rise of the fake follower marketplace and the means of detecting them, the Times showed how complicated, and often obfuscatory, this corner of the influencer industry had become.

Just a few months later, in May 2018, Unilever chief marketing officer Keith Weed, who oversees the $8 billion-plus marketing budget for one of the world’s biggest advertisers,41 announced that the company would no longer work with influencers who bought followers. Further, he called on social media companies to “help eradicate bad practices throughout the whole ecosystem.”42 “There are lots of great influencers out there, but there are a few bad apples spoiling the barrel, and the trouble is, everyone goes down once the trust is undermined,” Weed told Reuters.43 Weed’s announcement made waves at Cannes Lions, the annual global marketing conference where he spoke, and beyond.

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