Your Fake Engagement Is Giving You Away

Being really obvious

Author’s own image

I came across an account recently that seems to deal in a lot of fake engagement. I’d been giving them the benefit of the doubt, as they’d even written about other people conducting ‘fake’ engagement on their own stories. I thought they were just a struggling writer.

But they clapped on a story of mine that hadn’t been visited by anyone else in days, and the clap registered as a ‘view’ not a ‘read’. It was a three minute story, so if they’d stayed around to read any of it, their visit would have registered as a read because they’d been there for at least 30 seconds (unless they hated it and clicked away).

It was basically a clap and run episode, where they only clapped because they wanted a read-back. And that approach is working for them. I see the reads on their own stories have improved since they started doing this.

Then I saw them leave a comment on someone else’s story. It was a copy and paste of someone else’s comment — right next to the identical comment. Not obvious at all! There was no indication that they’d read the story, or even knew what it was about. All they did was ruin the writer’s read ratio, and bring down his already disappointing earnings.

I had been giving this new member the benefit of the doubt, even trying to help…