Fake engagement: 1,000 views just for $1.40

Despite the billions of fake accounts removed by social media platforms annually¹, the market for artificial engagement remains very affordable. Our study reveals that popularity on social media is increasingly a commodity, not an indicator of genuine public interest. As high engagement figures are easily fabricated for mere pennies, users must look beyond surface-level metrics to avoid falling victim to deceptive content and sophisticated online scams.

Key insights

• This study examines the cost of fake social media engagement by collecting pricing data from websites that sell artificial likes, shares, followers, views, and comments. A clear pattern in the data is that views are the cheapest form of engagement across all analyzed platforms. Prices range from $1.40 per 1,000 views on TikTok to $6.70 on YouTube. Because reaching an audience of a thousand viewers can be purchased for less than the cost of a cup of coffee on most platforms, views may be one of the least reliable indicators of authentic engagement.
• By contrast, comments emerged as the most expensive form of fake engagement on social media. Based on the available data, the average price for 1,000 random positive comments was lowest on YouTube at $93, followed by Instagram at $104, TikTok at $140, and Facebook at $287. These prices suggest that comments may be more expensive to fake at scale than other interaction types. As a result, the number of comments under a post or video may serve as a stronger indicator of authenticity than views, although it should not be considered reliable on its own.
• Shares, reposts, and retweets tend to be the second-most expensive form of fake engagement, suggesting they may be a stronger indicator of active audience participation than views or likes on most social media platforms. TikTok is the most expensive platform on which to purchase fake shares, at $68 per 1,000, followed by Instagram and Facebook at $37 and X (formerly Twitter) at $27. YouTube is an outlier, with shares costing only $17 per 1,000. It is also the only platform analyzed where likes are more expensive to purchase than shares.
• Likes generally occupy the middle ground between inexpensive views and more costly comments and shares. The prices of likes remain relatively low across the analyzed platforms, ranging from approximately $10 to $25 per 1,000. This indicates that like counts alone may create a misleading impression of popularity and should not be treated as reliable evidence of genuine audience approval.
• Followers and subscribers are also relatively inexpensive to purchase on most social media platforms. The advertised price for 1,000 fake followers ranges from $14 to $20 on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). YouTube is a clear outlier, with 1,000 artificial subscribers costing $78 — more than four times the average price of followers on the other four platforms.

Methodology and sources

Pricing data were collected from SocialWick and BuzzVoice for five major social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter). These two websites were selected because they publicly list prices for multiple types of artificial engagement across several major platforms, making them suitable for comparison. The study examined the advertised prices of artificial views, likes, shares, followers, and comments. To make the offers comparable, all prices were standardized to the cost per 1,000 interactions. When both websites offered the same interaction type, the prices were averaged and then compared across platforms. Where pricing was unavailable from one or both providers, conclusions were based only on the available data.

References