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I’ve noticed several sales threads, even from higher-tier members, blatantly selling pages with entirely (not even partially) fake audiences and selling them for a high price without disclosure.
This devalues Swapd as a marketplace as it will deter potential serious buyers who come to this site, see one of these pages, assume the entire site is a scam and leave.
Blatant cases (such as one I saw where an account had less than 50 views on its video but thousands of comments and millions of followers) should be removed and the user warned.
Maybe if they openly declare the account has fake followers, then users can make their independent decision there, maybe they just want some simple social proof. But selling them as if they are real lowers trust in the entire site.
Interested to hear what other people think. I do love that Swapd provides safety in such a scammy industry, I just think removing listings like this could lead to a much stronger Swapd in the long term.
EDIT: Another reason is people trying to sell pages with a legit organic audience face unrealistic price expectations caused by people selling fake audience pages as if they are real and accepting a lower price because essentially any price that exceeds the cost of fake followers is worth it to them. I think the site would make more revenue by focusing on quality as the average price per sale would increase quite a lot.
SWAPD is too big now for us to monitor every single new topic. You, the members, have the power in your hands to limit/curb this. Simply flag suspicious listings, and we will review them. It’s that simple.
^ This is the one that prompted me to make the thread, 42 views and thousands of comments and 2.5m followers. Other obvious signs: the countries used are the most common for fake followers, 50%+ women on a car page supposedly.
I’ll look through the first few 100k+ follower IG accounts I see listed and see what comes up.
800k Girl Memes Instagram / Cheap < hiding comments, unrealistic ER, manual look at some of the likes and followers - 100% bot account
First off it’s stated that it’s inactive very clearly, it’s a very aged account. And any buyers I state that too that’s why the price is so low, the audience is also all low tier countries, they also got hidden a while ago and I’m helping someone sell the pages. Some people buy that here, I have bought accounts here several times that fit the criteria and I was happy with the account as I knew what I was getting, and the low price
I mean, the post is from June, and people already commented on the listing that the page is crap. So you’re asking us to remove those? Because a quick glance on most listings comments will verify whether something is good or not. Is it really that problematic for you to take a few moments and review things? I don’t have the actual numbers, but if I had to guess, probably more than 80% of stuff listed on SWAPD (or any similar site) has social properties with dead activity. It’s just how things work in SM. Vetting is the key if you want to buy.
I can vet it very quickly, I’m not raising the issue for that reason.
Two things:
Lurkers on the site with money to spend will never become active as they will see these and assume the marketplace is low quality.
People’s perception of the worth of pages is distorted by this, regardless of whether from case to case they can discern fake from real. This means people selling real audiences cannot get the true value for their pages.
Not allowed; you must own the pages directly in order to sell them on Swapd. Also, “Inactive” is misleading. Those followers are fake.
Correct, but sellers lie and sometimes it’s hard to tell when they hide likes/comments, etc. Also, his point wasn’t strictly about this… it was about fake accounts inflating the prices and also causing a bad rep with Swapd in general.
