This is How You Find Out That a Medium Follower Is Fake

Summary

The content discusses methods for identifying fake followers on Medium, who often inflate view counts without generating genuine readership.

Abstract

The article provides insights into the prevalence of fake followers on Medium, which can be detrimental to creators by skewing engagement metrics. It explains that Medium is actively cleaning up these spam accounts. The author outlines two primary ways to identify fake followers: through Medium's email notifications about new followers, which may lead to non-existent profiles or profiles that do not list the creator as someone they follow, and by observing stories with high view counts but low reader engagement, indicating ghost followers. The piece also notes that some fake followers may even use bots to increase views on their own stories, though such accounts often face bans.

Opinions

The author believes that the decrease in followers due to Medium's cleanup efforts is beneficial, as it helps maintain authenticity in follower counts.
It is suggested that successful Medium writers often overlook notifications and may not engage with lesser-known writers, which could be a missed opportunity for networking.
The author expresses concern over the discrepancy between high view counts and low actual readership, which is a sign of fake followers.
The article implies that ghost followers are harmful to genuine writers, as they distort the true reach and impact of one's work.
The author encourages reporting fake followers to help maintain the integrity of the Medium platform, echoing Medium's own stance on the issue.

This is How You Find Out That a Medium Follower Is Fake

Screenshot by the author

Surely you’ve noticed the decrease in followers on your follower’s tab here on Medium. Only the worst part is not exactly that, because this is good, it helps your account to keep only authentic followers. The worst part is when you see that your account is packed with followers but every time you publish a story you see 90 views and 5 reads. I know, it’s crazy, but it happens often here on Medium.

Finally, the Medium team has noticed this spam and has already started taking action against all of them. Those who have not yet started to notice these differences in the decrease of followers in their accounts and publications can rest assured that soon their accounts may show the cleanup. But what motivated me to write this story is not about the cleanup of fake followers that Medium is doing, but rather how to identify yourself that that particular follower is fake.

How do you determine a fake Medium follower?

I don’t know how often you get Email notifications on Medium, but Medium has a habit of notifying all creators whenever an action happens on your Medium account, be it a comment, a message in the private, a clapping, a highlight, IDs, and when you are followed by a new user.

Most successful Medium writers ignore notifications. Few successful Medium writers give feedback to underperforming writers. But that won’t be the case.

To give you a sense that this follower is real, you can catch it through the notification that Medium sends to you telling you that you have new followers. They are all listed in the E-mail. Click on each one, and you will get their page within Medium. Two things can happen when you try to view the page of these fake followers.

1 — This follower usually has a few followers, has no stories posted, and in the list of followers he follows, you are not listed. You can scroll down to the last follower you will not be in the list of followers. This is a fake account and should be banned immediately.

Screenshot by the author

2 — When you click on the name of this follower through your E-mail, you will notice that there is his username, but the page comes up with the famous 404 error. This is a fake follower that deserves to be banned immediately.

Screehshot by the author

In general, these fake followers are those who view your story, but no readers appear. Your story gets a lot of views and the readers do not exist. You can be sure that if your stories have the habit of being viewed but have not had a significant number of readers, then you are right in front of ghost followers.

So with this mechanism, you can see that there are enough fake followers in your account that they are just filling up your account and hurting your hard work.

Do these Ghost followers ever post stories?

Unfortunately, some do publish stories, and even if they have less than 50 followers, their stories never get less than 500 views. In other words, they use bots even to leverage their stories. I have met several writers who have now been banned.

So, as Medium’s burn said. If you see one, report it and be safe.