The local interest and marketing social media page What’s Up SCV has reportedly been buying Instagram followers, and is accused of misconstruing its online reach to paid advertisers.
An invoice provided to KHTS from massgress.com, a site that claims to offer “100 percent real” Instagram followers, shows that What’s Up SCV bought in excess of 40 thousand followers over a period of around two months in late 2021.
This still leaves the social media page with a sizable amount of followers, assuming that the approximately 41 thousand remaining accounts are genuine.
As of Oct. 31, 2022, the What’s Up SCV Instagram account had over 91 thousand followers, both genuine and fake.
Buying followers is not usually considered a big deal, besides being disingenuous, and is most commonly used by influencers to bloat their standing.
However, the practice is concerning for advertising clients, who rely on the viewership of such followers to increase their business, and base the pricing of such paid advertising on the number of followers the page has.
According to several recent clients, the cost of buying a sponsored post on What’s Up SCV’s Instagram page is valued at around $2,000 per month, with a special membership program offered in spring 2022 at a 20 percent discount at only $600 per month if a full year is bought – or $7,200.
The main Whats Up SCV Instagram page is not the only one that has bought followers, with a prank account made up for April Fool’s Day (@dontlistentowhatsupscv), allegedly also receiving up to 10 thousand bot followers.
As of Oct. 28, the page had 1,298 followers. Most followers looked genuine at first glance, however, a more in-depth perusal brought to light some questionable details. A majority of the followers used stock photos, had massive follower-to-following ratios, or had names only written in Cyrillic script.
While none of these points individually are of much concern, together, they point toward a majority of @dontlistentowhatsupscv followers being accounts that are created primarily to provide social media followers for pay.
Freelancer Arrested For Fake 9-1-1 Calls
Although they were not at fault, What’s Up SCV has been connected to other allegations of misinformation in the past, such as when a freelance photographer or “stringer” associated with the social media account was arrested and charged with allegedly making several false 9-1-1 reports to the Los Angeles County Fire Department over the span of two months.
No we do not condone that type of behavior. We work as closely as we can with all first responders. Hearing what he did upset us deeply, this is not what this platform was created for.
— What’s Up SCV (@whatsupscv) January 18, 2022
“No we do not condone that type of behavior. We work as closely as we can with all first responders. Hearing what he did upset us deeply, this is not what this platform was created for,” read a social media post from What’s Up SCV in response to Trejo’s arrest.
What’s Up SCV is not believed to have any part in the false reports instigated by Trejo, according to investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
KHTS reached out to What’s Up SCV, but did not receive a response as of the publication of this article.
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