[jVinc]

I feel like a lot of what's in the category of "you wont believe this is getting popular" on tiktok is a result of them faking views and follower numbers to rope in creators who then go on to think tens of thousands of people are watching them do some random videos, which makes them double down and focus and then eventually gain a real but still much lower real following.

I don't have any evidence to back up the claim that they are faking views, but I know for a fact that the hundreds of followers I have gained making almost no content are not real. And it seems extremely suspicious that they've engineered their whole "creator fund" around trying to not pay creators based just on views/likes and subs, if they where real that would be the most accurate measure to target. But feels like they've decided to completely ignore them and to "sort" creators, likely because they know there's some creators with majorly fake followers that they don't want to pay, but still want to keep on the platform so they keep their fake engagement metrics high, and then there's the "real" popular names that they know they need to pay, but still underpay compared to other platforms. But creators still stick to tiktok because "they have a much larger following". It smells.