Influencer fraud--the pain of influencer marketing

• 
  
• Tools, systems, tea leaves, and whatever else can be conjured up to tell ‘good’ from ‘bad’ in the influencer industry has to be celebrated and commended. But, as with anything that aims to clean-up a swamp (and, not to get all Trump for a moment, this industry is firmly built on a swamp), has to undergo the same rigorous scrutiny (if not more) as that which it aims to tackle.
  No one system can (or will) ever be infallible. Fraudulent influencers will continue to exist, all the while both the incentive and tools to commit fraud exist. Sure, as the systems improve, many of the crudest fraudsters will get caught (but, so will many who are innocent); but, the savvier hawks out there will twist, turn, adapt, and change to get through the net and continue reaping the rewards of their approach.
  This is why we need the social networks to act. They’re the only ones with access to the full data, to tell us who is using automated systems, who has thousands of inactive followers, whose hours of activity are well outside the norm. Until the Facebook’s of the world wake up and realize the long-term damage fraud is doing to their precious networks, fraud will always exist in one form or another — and those of us who care about this industry and want to see it survive will have to keep battling against them, try to uncover their tactics, and make sure we don’t incentive and reward the cheats; rather that simply declaring that one silver bullet has ended the war.