I bought myself fake Twitter followers from Taobao

Facebook sues four Chinese companies for selling fake accounts but Taobao shows there are plenty more sellers

Reading Time:3 minutes

I'm pretty sure I could have gotten a better price, I'm just so bad at bargaining. (Picture: Screenshot from Taobao)

Published: 7:30pm, 5 Mar 2019Updated: 8:58am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Facebook has sued four Chinese companies for selling fake Facebook and Instagram accounts. It represents a major effort by a large Western platform to strike back at alleged click farms in China. But as we found out, purchasing likes and followers on social media might be easier than you think.

It took only a brief search on China’s most popular ecommerce platform Taobao. I typed “Facebook like” in Chinese and voilà – the doors to online popularity were open for me.

(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba, the owner of Taobao.)

Some of the companies selling fake followers, likes, and comments describe themselves as overseas websites marketing and promotion. Others say they are international fans marketing companies. I picked one that's named Grey Grey Technology because the name seemed so very apt. And besides, it had good reviews.

“It's been ten days and it's relatively stable, the number of fans did not drop. Buyers' after sales service is excellent,“ wrote one satisfied customer (could those good reviews be fake too? I wonder).

Our seller told us that the current prices on the market for Facebook and Instagram were between US$1.50 and US$3 for 100 followers. Around US$223 could buy you 10,000 followers on Facebook. And if you wanted to add another 10k for your Instagram, that would be less than US$300.

I'm pretty sure I could have gotten a better price, but I'm just so bad at bargaining. (Picture: Screenshot from Taobao)

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I bought myself fake Twitter followers from Taobao

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Facebook sues four Chinese companies for selling fake accounts but Taobao shows there are plenty more sellers

Facebook sues four Chinese companies for selling fake accounts but Taobao shows there are plenty more sellers