Fake Followers Audit: free game to spot fake followers

What is Fake Followers Audit?

Eight made-up creators want a brand deal. Work out each one's engagement rate, then read the growth chart, the comments and a sample of followers, and decide: a real audience, bought followers, or bought likes and comments.

Fake Followers Audit is a free social media game where you check made-up creators the way a brand would before a deal. Each profile shows followers, average likes and comments, an 8-week growth chart, the latest comments and four random followers. First work out the engagement rate: average likes plus average comments, divided by followers, times 100.

Then make the call. Bought followers leave a very low rate, a sudden unexplained jump and empty profiles with no photo and no posts. Bought likes and comments push the rate far too high, with generic comments like "Nice pic!" from empty accounts. But a spike isn't proof on its own: a creator whose video went viral can gain thousands of real followers in a week.

At a glance

Category

Social Media

Difficulty

Medium

Play time

3–4 min

Price

Free, in your browser, sign-up optional

How to play

Do the maths

Engagement rate = (average likes + average comments) ÷ followers × 100. Pick the right answer from four.

Read the clues

A sudden jump in followers, generic comments like "Nice pic!", followers with no photo and no posts.

Make the call

Real audience, bought followers, or bought likes and comments. A jump the week a video went viral can still be real.

Score

50 for the rate, 100 plus up to 50 for speed for the right call. 50 seconds a case, down to 30. A wrong call costs one of 3 lives.

Scoring

50 points for the right engagement rate.

100 points plus up to 50 for speed for the right verdict.

50 seconds per case at the start, 30 for the last; a wrong verdict costs one of 3 lives.

What it trains

Spotting fake engagement

Read growth spikes, generic comments and empty profiles as clues.

Engagement maths

Compute (likes + comments) ÷ followers × 100 and catch decimal slips.

Influencer vetting

Check an audience before a brand deal instead of trusting the follower count.

Strategy and tips

Do the maths first

Add likes and comments, divide by followers, times 100. Watch the decimal point: 0.47% and 4.7% tell very different stories.

Know the range

In this game, 1% to 6% is healthy. Far below or far above is a reason to look closer.

Read the comments

Real fans mention the actual post. "Great content 🔥" fits under anything.

Open a few followers

One empty profile is normal. Three out of four is a pattern.

Ask why a spike happened

A jump the week a video went viral, with real comments, is a real audience.

Why play Fake Followers Audit?

Follower counts are easy to buy, so brands, agencies and creators themselves learn to look past them. Comparing engagement to followers, checking growth for unexplained jumps and reading the comments and profiles are the basics of an influencer audit. The same habit of checking a number against the clues around it helps with any metric that looks too good, or too bad, to be true.

Frequently asked questions