Most ICO Telegram channels are stuffed with fake subscribers

[drmilind2004]

All fakes!  That's the feel I get from my recent monitoring of the Telegram space.  I have seen channels with genuine subscribers, and these are boisterous places, with messages flying thick and fast all the time.

And then there are the 'other' channels, for the newly launched ICOs, mostly silent bar the daily posts, and a few welcome messages here and there. These channels would at best contain less than ten new posts on any given day, yet their subscriber count runs above twenty thousand!

A cursory observer would be definitely impressed. So was I with one such channel that has 27,000 members, until the total lack of engagement made me wonder. If there are tens of thousands of people on this channel, surely ten or twenty might feel like posting something at any given occasion. But no such luck, apart from a few admin posts rotated daily, there's no interaction.

Then I came across an ad that promised fake Telegram subscribers, and the mystery was solved! For about USD 400, you could get 20,000 fake subscribers. Add a couple of hundred real subscribers, that would cost slightly more, and you have a perfectly impressive setup.

For good measure you can set up an admin bot to weed out the spammers, or have a good social media team member manage this account. One of these 20k+ ICO accounts didn't even have an admin; because spammers were posting external links and nobody seemed to intervene.

Given this real state of affairs, maybe someone ought to call Telegram's bluff when it comes to ICO marketing. Unfortunately, this will never happen, because with marketing budgets for ICOs running into the hundreds of thousands at the very least, throwing away 500 bucks for a nicely padded Telegram account is such a no-brainer!

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[TryNinja]

Most of them don't actually buy subscribers. Instead, they run a bounty that offers a few stakes to whoever joins the channel. The problem is that those bounty hunters are also joining other 10 channels per day to get as many shit-tokens as possible (trying to make some money), so they don't actually care about the project - and consequently, don't post anything. In the end, the ICO will get 10k ghost subscribers who don't say a word. Don't use the number of subs on a telegram channel/group to measure an ICO's success.

[joniboini]

You can also blame aidrop for that. The only times those "fake subscribers" become active is when their bounties ended and they'll spam the group with "when bounties", "when exchange", "when distribution" and so on. I don't know why they continue that practice because I don't think investors are stupid enough to invest in a project just because they have a lot of Telegram members.

[Unikeys]

It's all about money at the end of the day, gaining these ghost subscribers without doubt help build up the network so that more people will be aware of this brand, whether or not they will engage in the conversation.

[hugeblack]

In the past, there was a few ICO projects and fewer honest projects "that enable you to earn a good income" but after the end of 2017 and the insane rise of many of those shit-tokens, users have increased and credibility has decreased.[1]

There are thousands[2] of projects that are issued daily and zero "0.000001" percentage real, so does not be surprised by the number of participants and followers.

As a tip: do not invest or join those projects & do not consider the [white paper, design of the site, number of members, social media followers/likes, developer team, invested money,...etc] measures of the success. "everything can be faked"

[1] $6.3 Billion: 2018 ICO Funding Has Passed 2017's Total
[2] BEST ICO LIST: Upcoming ICOs List and Ongoing ICO list - 2018

[KingScorpio]

jes well are they so different from the bitcoin cult?

they want to be heard, and they also promise high returns like the bitcoin community that constantly says "hodl"  

in the end they compete all for a limited supply of money earning cattle, that is willing to work

[richminded]

You can also blame aidrop for that. The only times those "fake subscribers" become active is when their bounties ended and they'll spam the group with "when bounties", "when exchange", "when distribution" and so on. I don't know why they continue that practice because I don't think investors are stupid enough to invest in a project just because they have a lot of Telegram members.

Definitely, telegram community is not a basis of a good project. So many fake account spamming the group which is not healthy for the project. I experience those guys who are just active asking about that (when exchange and when distribution) and its really annoying, and some of them telling that the project is a scam because of the delay.

Then I came across an ad that promised fake Telegram subscribers, and the mystery was solved! For about USD 400, you could get 20,000 fake subscribers. Add a couple of hundred real subscribers, that would cost slightly more, and you have a perfectly impressive setup.

This is what technology, we are really growing and those greedy people take this technology as their advantage. So if you are investors, you must consider every detail of a project don’t be fooled by those money raised during the private sale, understand their project instead.

[Andrey13101991]

Nowadays this is very often practiced. I think that in this way they attract participants in their campaign bounty. Unfortunately with these cheating is very hard to fight.

[Oasisman]

Nowadays this is very often practiced. I think that in this way they attract participants in their campaign bounty. Unfortunately with these cheating is very hard to fight.

Consider it cheating, but there is something we can do to prevent this. If youre a smart investor, you wont probably put your money into such project where the telegram community channel is full of ghost who dont have any healthy conversations in regard with the project development and other stuff discussing future success. But then again, as most of the people who have mentioned above that everything could be faked which is a bit hard for us to determine which one, but there are these ICO's who are obviously fake and a hundred percent scam.

[omi121]

Is there any way of finding out if the subscribers of telegram group are real or not?

[drmilind2004]

Is there any way of finding out if the subscribers of telegram group are real or not?

There's no automated, dashboard display to identify a fake Telegram account. All of them seem real enough.

But, there's a manual, slow way. You will need to send a private message to their accounts. If they respond, and their response to your query seems human enough, then that's a real account. There may be real accounts who choose not to respond, but certainly no fake account will pass this test.  Only, it's very time consuming; and some real accounts may choose not to respond, so false positives.

[xIIImaL]

I agree with you dude. I see many people on the various telegram group and channel are automatically added by different people because of the user's week security measures on telegram.
By using that Telegram subscription sellers randomly search the name on telegram and adding them to the group and channel. I do not why telegram is not yet moderated these things to avoid spam group in our box. I have seen this discussion here first time here. Hence I have shared few merits to your post. Great day.

[stomachgrowls]

Most of them don't actually buy subscribers. Instead, they run a bounty that offers a few stakes to whoever joins the channel. The problem is that those bounty hunters are also joining other 10 channels per day to get as many shit-tokens as possible (trying to make some money), so they don't actually care about the project - and consequently, don't post anything. In the end, the ICO will get 10k ghost subscribers who don't say a word. Don't use the number of subs on a telegram channel/group to measure an ICO's success.

This is one of the ways too where they do set out an airdrop which would require users or participants to join up their telegram which we do know that there are lots of bounty hunters but on the other side there are offers about those subs which doesnt really have any sense why some groups do need that which users do randomly join up into random groups without any notice and later on you do find out that you are already a member of that group which you arent really interested this is why i do see this is really a useless thing.

[KingScorpio]

there is a new tactic, to the passive bots there are now also  active bots that look like fake users that pm people recommending them icos

[nina_duschenko]

Yep, it`s   

What do you recommend ICO Telegram channel at all if smn want to start from scratch? Some marketing tips?