Avoiding Fakes: How to Tell if a YouTuber's Audience is RealWith the rise of social media, it has become easier than ever to artificially inflate one's online presence by buying fake followers or views. However, it is important to be aware of this practice, especially when you work with bloggers to promote your project.So how do we know that their numbers are real? Through YouTube due diligence.•
Comments/views ratio: a ratio of 1 comment per 100 views is considered fine, but 1 comment per 1,000 views is suspect.
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Are those comments sensible, or spammy? If all the comments are written on the day when the video is posted, under weird nicknames, and all are more or less the same, they are likely fake.
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Fresh videos should have fewer views than older ones. If a video that is 2 days old has more views than one that’s 2 weeks old, the views are likely fake.
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Tools like VidIQ and BuzzGuru allow you to see views on a chart: A sudden spike in views is a sign of fake. Number of views going down instead of up is also a sign of fake views, as they can be removed.
Additionally, you can observe the channel's behaviour, if the channel is not responding to comments or not having any interaction with its followers, it could be a sign of fake activity.
