You or your team is probably doing this...

Bonjour,

You've probably been there. You hit ‘publish’ on that video or post you spent all week on, and... crickets. Your content is sitting at zero comments or likes, and it’s painful to watch. Then the temptation to give it a little nudge creeps up.

A quick text to the team group chat seems like an easy, harmless fix. "Hey, can everyone go drop a 'Great video!' and a 'Fire emoji' on the new post? Let's get the conversation going!"

On the surface, it’s just supportive teamwork but in reality, it’s f**king up your channel. The algorithms aren't just looking at the number of comments; they’re analyzing where they come from and who is making them. You’d be stupid to think they don’t know.

The platforms can tell the difference.

They know if you and your team share accounts, and they log into another to comment. IP addresses, locations, behaviour, all tracked.
What's worse is if people know your team or your fake profiles and see it over and over, they just shake their head in disappointment at you. All that work for nothing…

Why Your "Supportive" Comments Are Self-Sabotage

The algorithms on YouTube and Instagram are extremely sophisticated. They have to be to manage billions of active users. When you try to "prime the pump" with your own comments, you are often triggering alarms you don't even know exist.

1. The Algorithm's 'B.S. Detector'

Imagine five people from your company WiFi network all commenting within minutes of each other on a post that has zero outside traffic. It doesn't look like engagement, it looks like coordinated artificial activity. (It knows…)

When YouTubes AI detects contrived activity, they don't just ignore it, they actively throttle that video’s reach. You’ve just paid to turn off your new viewers. Thank you team for doing the reverse of your job! It's the same for Instagram and Tikytokky as well.

2. Destroying Your Own Data

Every comment you get provides data to the platform to help them find more people like that commenter.

• If 5 out of 10 comments are from your own team, fake profile, or family you aren't learning what your actual, real-world audience cares about. This is shadow-performance. You might think a topic is a huge success because your you boosted it, only to find the next video on that topic completely tanks because your actual audience didn't care.

3. Breaking the Trust Network

Today’s audience is highly skeptical. They can smell artificial engagement a mile away. When a new viewer clicks your video, sees a few comments, and realises they are all from the same five people, they lose trust in you. Real people are less likely to leave a real comment if the space is already occupied by a scripted conversation.

Internal vs. Organic: A Reality Check

If you’re reading this and still trying to navigate a way around it, maybe a VPN, or get someone in another country to comment or some other trick… just stop. Waste energy on other things like knitting or hyrox. Just get 1% better every time. That’s your goal.

If you need vanity metrics that much to feel significant in life, go buy indian followers.

Peace!

Me