A week ago, I noticed odd things about 500px that I found disturbing.

I noticed quite a few (in fact most) of the people showing tens of thousands of followers that I checked, appear to have mostly fake followers. I was perplexed how it was that someone with a mere 70 to 100 nice but not great photos could have 30,000 followers. When I click on their followers list, almost all of their followers have zero followers of their own, and they have zero photos posted. These appear to be fake user accounts.

I saw this across many 500px users with huge followings. Something is not right.

I created a fake 500px account and posted the photo shown in the thumbnail image below. It’s a stupid photo, with over saturated colors, intentionally making it stupid. I titled the photo “Fake waterfall and pond”. This stupid photo quickly made the “Popular” list!

Continue reading Why I stopped using the 500px photo sharing web site →