Genshin Impact gaining unusual amount of social media followers in a week sparks debates and allegations

New allegations state that official Genshin Impact social media accounts are using bots as fake followers to boost their popularity artificially. While it's impossible to prove that miHoYo or another company tied to this game is behind this, there are still some discussions to be had pertaining to this topic. Much of the debates come from Twitter user @HoYoverseJapan, who is not officially affiliated with HoYoverse.

These allegations essentially state that Genshin Impact-related Weibo accounts got a ton of followers in a short span of time that came out of nowhere, with "fake followers" supposedly being the most likely culprit. The accusations featured below are associated with Weibo specifically, although it is possible that other social media accounts have been similarly impacted.

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Looking at the allegations of Genshin Impact buying followers

There are two tweets to dissect here. The older allegation is at the bottom, so let's start with it. @HoYoverseJapan claims that HoYoverse was caught buying fake followers on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media site. Its Genshin Impact account apparently got almost one million followers in seven days (the bottom tweet states one day, but the top one mentions seven). It previously took this company three months to reach the same milestone.

The top tweet here is an update stating that the daily average follower growth dropped from 200,000 to 25,000, a significant reduction of 87.5%. Genshin Impact's official account has reached 10 million followers on Weibo since then.

It is important to note that it is impossible to prove directly that HoYoverse bought the followers for Genshin Impact. Some players think that anybody could have paid for the bots on Weibo. Twitter user @curryasdfg even states that some people buy followers for "their opponents" to make them look bad.

Since there is no way to confirm what's going on here, it's worth looking at how other companies and famous people are involved in a similar situation.

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Other examples of bots boosting engagement in social media

An example of a report that included some figures on potentially fake followers for some brands (Image via Sortlist)

According to an old marketing report by Sortlist published back on September 15, 2022, many popular celebrities had higher engagement as a result of fake followers. Examples included in that source stated the following percentages of these celebrities included potentially suspicious followers:

• 28% for Nicki Minaj
• 28% for Hande Erçel
• 27% for Miley Cyrus
• 27% for Katy Perry
• 27% for Demi Lovato
• 27% for Justin Timberlake
• 26% for Zendaya
• 26% for Gal Gadot

More examples are provided in that report, but readers should get an idea that several big-name people had accounts that seemed more popular than they were because of bots. The data may come from late 2022, but it should still be somewhat relevant in 2023.

That report even mentioned how brands like Pizza Hut had 30% of its followers being potentially fake. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that a major company like HoYoverse/miHoYo/Cognosphere could be involved in something similar for Genshin Impact. Yet, it is vital to mention that anybody outside those companies could have also paid for the bots.