How to spot fake followers on Instagram and TikTok

Bought followers

Accounts sold in bulk, mostly inactive or automated. They raise the follower count and nothing else, so views and likes per follower fall.

Bought likes, views and comments

Engagement bought for single posts. It makes a post look busy, but the numbers rarely fit together: views with no likes, or likes with no conversation.

Comment pods

Groups of creators who agree to like and comment on each other's posts as soon as they go up, to push them in the feed. The people are real; their interest in your product isn't.

Giveaway followers

People who followed to enter a prize draw. Real people, but many followed for the prize and never watch again, so the count overstates the audience.

Sudden follower jumps are the classic sign, but they're hard to see from outside: neither Instagram nor TikTok shows past follower counts on a public profile. Note the count when you first find an account and again a few weeks later, and ask the creator for the growth chart in their insights. A jump with no viral post to explain it is worth a question. A sharp fall can mean a clean-up: TikTok says that when it detects inauthentic metrics, it removes "fake likes, followers, or other inflated signals" (TikTok's integrity guidelines).

On Instagram, if a profile offers an "About this account" panel, it shows when the account joined, the country it's based in and its former usernames. Many past usernames can mean an account was bought or repurposed.

Say a TikTok account with 50,000 followers has these plays on its last 9 videos: 1,200, 1,300, 1,400, 1,500, 1,600, 1,700, 1,800, 2,100 and 240,000. The average is about 28,000 plays, or 56% of followers, which looks healthy. The median, the middle value once they're sorted, is 1,600, or 3.2% of followers. The viral video hides the fact that a typical video reaches 1,600 people.

Bought engagement is bought post by post, and if it lands on a few posts, the median sets those aside too. A big gap between the average and the median is itself worth noticing. Use posts at least 3 days old, since newer ones are still collecting views. The TikTok engagement rate calculator and the Instagram engagement rate calculator take the medians for you.

1. 01

   Pick a yardstick

   Find 3 to 5 accounts in the same niche with a similar follower count. Ratios only mean something next to accounts like it.

2. 02

   Work out the medians

   Views per follower and engagement for the creator and the yardstick accounts, from posts at least 3 days old.

3. 03

   Read the comments

   Three recent posts: are they about the content, in the right languages, from different people each time?

4. 04

   Sample the followers

   Scroll a screen or two of the followers list, if it's visible.

5. 05

   Note the follower count and date

   Check again before you pay. A jump in between, with no viral post to explain it, is a question to ask.

6. 06

   Ask for insights

   For anything beyond a free product, ask the creator for their audience figures, as below.

The best evidence is the platform's own data, which only the creator can see. Ask for screenshots of their audience insights, or for a larger deal, a short screen recording scrolling through them:

• Instagram: insights show where followers are, their age ranges and gender, and follower growth, for creator and business accounts (About Instagram insights).
• TikTok: Analytics has a Followers tab with gender, age and top locations, and a Viewers page; TikTok says the viewer figures come from predictive models rather than confirmed data (TikTok's guide to analytics).
• A past brand post: its reach or views and link clicks, which show what a paid post did rather than what an account looks like.

Explain why: you're checking the audience is in your markets, not accusing anyone. If you pay per result, the question matters less; our guide to paying TikTok and Instagram creators covers the options.

Third-party "fake follower" checkers estimate from public numbers and their own models. Unless the creator connects their account, none sees the platform's own audience data, so treat any score as a prompt to look closer, not a verdict.

Both platforms ban buying engagement. Instagram warns against apps that offer likes and followers, and TikTok's guidelines don't allow "buying or selling followers or engagement for financial gain". In the US, the FTC's 2024 rule on fake reviews and testimonials prohibits buying or selling fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views from bots or hijacked accounts, where the buyer knew or should have known they were fake and uses them for a commercial purpose (FTC announcement). The rule applies to anyone, brands included. This isn't legal advice.

Nakodo doesn't detect fake followers or label anyone as having them. Its engagement part measures what an audience does, so an account whose followers don't watch or react scores low, whatever the reason:

• TikTok: (likes + comments) / views. 1% gives 30 points, 3% gives 60, 6% gives 90, 10% or more gives 100.
• Instagram: (likes + comments) / followers, because Instagram doesn't share other accounts' views. 0.5% gives 30, 2% gives 60, 5% gives 90, 8% or more gives 100.
• Views per follower, averaged in where views are available, as on TikTok: 2% gives 25, 10% gives 65, 30% or more gives 100.

Points run on straight lines in between, and medians use posts at least 3 days old when there are at least 3. These are Nakodo's own thresholds, not an industry benchmark. Comments aren't read on Instagram or TikTok, so reading them stays with you. The full method is on how Nakodo works.