Yes, Rainer sadly these types of schemes are alive and well. Where there is room to cheat people unfortunately will. The system has always been game-able one way or another.🥲

Hi Heezy, I wouldn’t worry about reversing. What’s done is done. In the future, as you grow just be sure to comment back to all people who take the time to leave comments for you and in time all of your interactions will grow as will your numbers organically.

Yes! You should be suspicious – this is a badly programmed bot account that doesn’t even try to “blend” in. Unfollow immediately.

I have noticed that on Instagram. You see someone who is listed as new with zero posts and they already have 200 or 300 followers. I got a little suspicious at the time but now figure it has to be completely fake plus they always seem to be young attractive females. Probably part of a bigger scam.

Hey I’m not particularly looking for a record deal but I do wish to be viewed & heard I was under the impression buying views could be helpful so I bought some on my videos but not tons & I do have a small organic fan base but after reading this & these comments I feel as tho i should have never purchased any views at all now .. probably a stupid question but is there any way to reverse the effect once u made the purchase?

My label and I are dealing with an artist name theft by a girl from Brazil, who now also pretends it’s her real name as well. As the first Elektra, I’ve released material for more than a decade, and have received national and international acclaim. However, since the fake likes and related kicked in on social media, my label and I are dealing with a first case of a huge amount of bought likes, youtube views, twitter incl. in my artist name, which misleads my audience and gives off a wrong impression. This person also found a way to verify (!) my artist name on social media, and social media refused to cooperate so far, for after all “they represent the interest of those who fund them”, and artist trademarks (the first cometh – the first taketh) laws don’t seem to count to them. An industry insider, who’s also fighting against these practices, has informed me few days ago that on twitter alone 1 billion of USD is annually being made on fake likes alone.
Kind attempts to persuade this person to choose her own artist name has not led to any positive results. The bottom line is: how many albums and how much acclaim does an artist require to have in order not to deal with this kind of, pardon my language, bullshit?
I also notice that if you go on social media in these times, and you don’t become their paying client, you become sort of invisible.
My label and I have operated with mailing lists all these years, and we plan on pursuing this, as I can’t even go on facebook anymore using my own (!) artist name. My immense hard work, dedication, vision, and working against all odds, now leaves me with a girl who, as irony remains, played in a band called “Fake Number”, and who obviously never heard of work ethics, nor respecting her colleague’s hard work. Not to mention: how unoriginal to choose an artist name which has already build a reputation! I’ve talked about social media more in-depth in the most recent interview, take a look: http://miroirmagazine.com/2016/08/23/interview-with-musician-and-multi-media-artist-elektra/ So thank you for this article, and I hope I don’t have to spend my hard earned money – all by my own effort, as I do everything myself – on a lawyer…

If people view your video, but don’t comment or like/dislike it, this means they most likely didn’t finish the video, didn’t care to watch it, whatever. Views mean very little. If you have 1 million views, and 3 comments, even if those million views were not bought, it still hurts, because they most likely viewed it for a couple seconds and moved on. To me, honestly, that is the same thing as not liking your video but choosing to not “dislike” it with the button. They think that by hitting dislike, it will hurt you…but, they don’t realize, even the dislike button will add more cred to your account.
(Had this discussion with a few of my legitimate fans)