To figure out what influencers to hire, brands would look at their engagement rates—calculated by adding likes and comments on a post, then dividing by the number of followers, using third-party services like Captiv8 and Dovetale—trying to determine whose reach was real, and whose percentage was too low to be worth the money. Like any system, it can be gamed. And Instagram ended up fueling a problem not just about truth in advertising, but about truth in life.
