Sneakapp for TikTok offers to increase the number of followers a content creator has, and by the 1000s. While the website might sound like a great way to easily and quickly build a popular TikTok account, it could also negatively affect creators and even to the point where the followers gained from the website end up being the only ones an account has. Worst still, using services to gain free followers can sometimes result in an account being suspended or banned from the platform.
Whether it is Facebook and Twitter, or YouTube and TikTok, the one common element with all of these platforms is the reliance on a social environment. The more followers an account has, the more likely content shared by that account will go viral. Naturally, this can lead some to assume that the number of followers equals going viral, although things are never quite that simple. There are other components to the equation and while the number of followers is a major one, it is not always the most important factor.
Sneakapp is a website that claims to offer TikTok users a way to “get free followers.” What’s more, once you start going through the process of using the service, the website even lets the TikTokker choose how many followers they would like to boost their account by - options range from 1,000 to 5,000 followers each time. All in all, Sneakapp appears to offer a very quick and easy way to boost a TikTok’s account reach, and that is the first red flag.
Why Using Sneakapp Could Be A Bad Idea
The deal offered by Sneakapp is not any different to what's offered by many other services, and for all of the major platforms where followers matter. However, having x amount of followers is only part of what makes an account successful and from the perspective of platforms like TikTok and YouTube, the rate of engagement is equally as important. This can mean many things although it's most commonly thought of in terms of likes, shares, and comments. Irrespective of whether it’s a Tweet or a TikTok video, the more often users on a platform engage with content, the greater the chance of that content being recommended to even more users.
The problem with services that offer quick-fix solutions is the free followers are highly unlikely to translate into actual engagement. Yes, they can make the account's follower number greater and in turn, this could make the account look more attractive to other users. However, those followers are often bot (fake) followers who can't like, share or comment. Back in 2018, an in-depth investigation by The New York Times highlighted the scale of the fake followers problem on Twitter and even more recently, Facebook confirmed how the number of fake accounts is growing on its platform, as well as the measures the social network has since put in place to combat the issue.
An additional knock-on effect of these fake followers is that platforms like TikTok often use engagement as an indicator of whether content is worth sharing via its recommendation features. If a Tweet or a TikTok video is not being liked or commented on by all those account followers, the platform might interpret this ultra-low level of engagement as a reason to not promote the content itself, and bury it instead. After all, why would a platform like TikTok or YouTube want to recommend content when so many followers clearly do not deem it worthy of a like, let alone a comment or a share? Furthermore, if a platform decides to take a closer look at the account to see why so many followers are consistently, over time, not liking or commenting, then the platform may determine the followers to be fake. This could affect an account or channel in multiple ways, including suspension.
There’s no way to know for sure that Sneakapp is sending fake or bot followers to TikTok accounts, and especially considering the website does not appear to have any contact information to reach out for comment or engagement testimonials. However, all the signs would seem to suggest that the promise of free followers is nothing more than another attempt to channel fake followers to a service. That is, followers who don't naturally engage with content through likes and comments to generate the type of in-platform buzz services like TikTok use to decide whether content is worth sharing with the majority of its real users.