16 mn accounts of Indian Instagram influencers fake: Study

NEW DELHI: A whopping 16 million accounts of Indian influencers on Facebook-owned Instagram are fake, revealed a new study, suggesting such people are artificially boosting “vanity metrics” that marketers often use while selecting influencers, including followers and engagement.

The research by Swedish e-commerce start-up A Good Company and data analytics firm HypeAuditor jointly assessed 1.84 million Instagram accounts across 82 countries.

It found the three regions with the most fakes on the Facebook-owned platform are the US (49 million), Brazil (27 million) and India (16 million).