Is Buying Instagram Followers Against The Law? No, it's not illegal to buy followers for Instagram. This practice falls into a grey area: it's not against the law, but it does violate Instagram's community guidelines. The key distinction here is between legality and platform policy.

There are several ways to spot fake followers. The first and most obvious tactic is to visit the follower's page. Many fake followers have just a couple of posts (often none at all) and don't appear to be very active. Fake followers usually don't use pictures of real people in their profile pic or posts.

Using Google image reverse search will reveal a potential red flag. The best way to find out if someone has bought their audience and has fake followers is to use a fake follower audit tool such as ours. It's a great way to find out instantly the follower quality score of an influencer's audience.