I’m sacrificing my life for you guys to expose these scammers so i can protect my babies. Alright, Instagram is a problem that has been going on for a little bit too long and today I’m going to address it. So, if you’re an artist, you’ve probably seen comments like these. They’re so annoying. They get to your post the moment you post it, and they’re always saying promoted on this, promoted on that. So, what is this all about? That’s what we’re gonna talk about today, and we’re going to hopefully be able to end their careers.
This whole thing has been getting on my nerves. I’ve been seeing it on my comment sections, I’ve been seeing it on other people’s comment sections on people’s work who I like. So, we’re gonna do something about it. And just in case you didn’t know, these are scammers. So, in this article, I’m going to expose what they do, and at the end, I’m going to show you guys how you can deal with this on your Instagram account. Let’s get started.
Now, the first thing you’re going to notice with these comments is the people who leave the comments are actually bots, and what they’re promoting are these big accounts that do promotions for artists. So, I went down a rabbit hole and I took a look at these accounts, and they’re so fake.
Now, how can you tell these accounts are fake? Let’s take a look at one of these accounts right now. So, I’m on the page of this account called the House of Art. Welcome to Art Paradise. Now, I’m going to give you guys some industry insight as to how you can spot a fake account like this.
At first glance, the House of Art looks pretty legit. You know, 2.2 million followers, 27 following, got a whole lot of highlights here. But where this whole thing falls apart is when you start looking at their engagement. So, for those of you guys who are not super social media savvy, engagement rate basically means their total number of followers versus the average number of likes they get on each post.
So, there is actually a secret rule of thumb for you to keep in mind: usually, a big account like this, their number of likes is going to be about give or take 10% of their total following. So, 10% of 2.2 million is about 200,000 likes per post. Now, this number can vary from account to account. If it’s higher than 10%, that account has a really good engagement rate. If it’s lower than 10%, say maybe it’s about 5%, that doesn’t mean the account is fake. That just might mean that their content is not as engaging with their audience.
So, now with that in mind, let’s take a look at this. I’m going to scroll down here. 1253 views, 3 comments. 1000 views, 72000 views, 71000 views, 71000 views, 71000 views. Now, just looking at those views numbers, you might think, “Oh, 71000, that’s pretty good.” But here’s the catch: 9 comments, 4 comments, 1 comment, 5 comments, 1 comment, 0 comments. Usually, when actual people see a post, 1 in 1000 is probably going to leave a comment. Nobody’s leaving comments. I mean, this is just sad. It says 71000 views, but you got 3 comments. How is that possible? And there’s no indication to say that comments are being restricted or anything like that. This is free real estate, but nobody’s taking it. So, you’re wondering, what does this mean? Well, basically, it’s quite simple: these views are from bots. If you scroll up, 2.2 million followers – that’s just the number of bots that are following this account.
So, hypothetically, let’s say you DM them, you get them to promote your work on their account. The views that you’re going to get on your posts, the likes on your posts, and the potential followers that you’re going to get from that post, are all going to be a bunch of bots. They’re not actual followers, they are not real people. Now, if we take a look at real accounts, 1.1 million followers, look at the number of likes, look at the number of comments. This is an indication of a community that is active and actually real. The same thing here, 1.1 million, and if you scroll down here, look at the number of likes and the number of comments. This is an indication that this account is active, the fan base is active, and people are actually engaging with the content.
Now, going back to here, this is very sus. So, long story short, the engagement rate is how you can spot a fake account. I’ve got a couple other examples. Look at this one. 361000 followers, so I’m expecting about 30000 likes per post. Coming down here, 17000, 13000, 14000. It’s not great, but then you look at the comments, 1 comment, 1 comment, 0 comments, 0 comments. I mean, at least 17 people would have left a comment here if 17000 people saw it. That’s just how the engagement works on social media. So, this is fake. Here’s another one. 1 million followers. I’m expecting about 100000 likes. 600 views, 0 comments. Are you kidding me? You’re not even trying.
Okay, 82000 views, but 1 comment. Are you–? And the one comment is from the person who got scammed. But it doesn’t really end there. Since I hate my life, I wanted to know more about the operations of these accounts. So, guess what I did? I messaged three of these guys for promotions. Full disclaimer, kids, do not do this at home. Do not engage with these people online. Let me do the dirty work. Y’all have been sacrificing your lives in our roast videos. I’m sacrificing my life for you guys to expose these scammers so I can protect my babies.
So, guess what? I got some receipts. “We want to take some of your precious time.” That makes no sense. “We upload your pictures on my big network and my followers notice you. When you get a lot of followers and subscribers, promote your account. Fake followers.” So, I’m like, “Okay, I’m interested. I want to know how these guys work.” So, I said, “Yes, I’m interested in being featured.” And look at the prices on these. 15 dollars for story? Are you kidding me? Permanent post, 25, and then it goes all the way up to 99. That is not a small sum of money to be scamming somebody out of just to show their work to a bunch of bots. This one is the House of Arts. Same thing, 20 dollars for a story, and then it goes up to 66 dollars. “We have 3-plus million network.” No, you don’t. You have a network of bots.
In these messages, they’re trying to convince you that they have all this connection, they can do all this for your account. But it’s all a lie. And there’s this one, the Art House. What’s with the obsession with houses and their names? I don’t understand. A post, bus, story plus highlight, 45. This is not a small amount of money, guys. So now, what’s even more sad is I’m going to go on the Creative Arts account. They claim to be featuring the most influential artists. “We are promoting all art talents.” So, what did I say in my message? I was like, “Hey, what am I allowed to promote? Can I promote my six-pack shortcut workout routine?” Yes. So, I’m like, “If I pick the number three, how do I pay you?” And they usually take PayPal or Venmo or something like that. Can I promote violence? “Please send.” “Are you kidding me? I am promoting violence.”
So, don’t do this at home. Don’t talk to these people, okay? I just wanted to show you guys how these scams work. And from what I can see, on a lot of these accounts, there still seems to be a decent number of people who are falling for this. Okay, so just in case you didn’t know about this, they’re promoting your work to a bunch of bots. So now you’re like, “Alright, cool. We’ve exposed these people. So what can we do about it?” Well, yeah, I’m going to show you what you can do about it. This is the part where we end their careers. So, I’m going to show you guys on my phone so that you guys can follow me through the settings menus on Instagram.
Okay, so now I’m on my account. Yours might look a little bit different, but we’re going to go into the exact same menu so you can follow along. Here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to go to the top right-hand corner and click the three lines. It’s going to bring up a menu here, and the first thing that comes up is settings. So, you want to click on that little gear. That’s going to take us to our settings menu. From here, you want to go to privacy. That little icon with the lock. Privacy. First thing on the list is hidden words. This is how we’re going to stop these people. I’m going to click on hidden words.
Now, there are default options for hiding comments and hiding things that might be offensive, but you want to come down here to manage custom word list. So, what this allows you to do is you create a list of words, phrases, and emojis you don’t want to see in the comments or message requests so that you don’t have to deal with it. Out of sight, out of mind.
Now, I’m going to click add to list, and I can type in a word or phrase that I don’t want to see anymore. I’m going to type in “promote.” I’ll add it. And just for good measure, I’m going to type in “promoted.” So, now what Instagram is going to do is they’re going to actually hide these comments from me when these bots try to leave a comment on my posts. And that’s a win for us. So, if you didn’t know this, do this on your phone right now. Make sure you get that done so you don’t have to deal with this.
And if you know anybody who is thinking of promoting their work on these accounts, or if you know anybody who is dealing with a lot of these comments, send this article to them. Let them know about this and let’s save some artists’ livelihoods here. That’s it for this article. We’re going to wage war against these scammer accounts on Instagram who are trying to take money away from hard-working artists, and I won’t have that for my art babies. The Art House, the Creative Art, the House of Art – these are just three examples of a huge problem going on on Instagram right now, and they don’t seem to be doing anything about these big bot accounts. So, we gotta take matters into our own hands. I guess we’re beefing with these scammers now. But if you want to read more digital art content just like this, feel free to subscribe to my channel. I’d really appreciate it. With that being said, though, I will see you guys in the next article. May or may not roast you guys. Listen, here’s the thing: I gotta protect and look out for my fellow artists so that you guys don’t get scammed into stuff like this, so that you guys can keep being a part of the good, healthy art community, and so that you guys can keep producing work that I can keep roasting. I’m just kidding. I love you guys very much. I’m pretty happy with this. Yeah, that’s right. Don’t mess with my babies.
