The State of Influencer Misconduct 2024

Influencer marketing seems to be everywhere. What was once thought of as a fleeting trend has proven to be a must-have in any marketing strategy. Today, influencer marketing as an industry is valued at $24 billion in 2024. Over 60% of brands work with more than 10 influencers, and 14% of those work with over 1,000 influencers.

Brands work with influencers and creators because they help the brand establish credibility, reach new audiences, and even support sales. Leveraging influencers has proven to be a highly successful strategy for brands, with 43% of younger consumers saying that they would make a purchasing decision based on an influencer’s recommendation. This has and will continue to increase over time. In fact, the value influencers create for brands has more than doubled in the last five years. 

However, even with all of this created value there has also been inherent risk in working with influencers. It only takes one bad viral post to derail the positive influencer impact and harm a brand’s reputation along with long and short term sales. Some recent notable examples are Adidas and Doritos, who were left dealing with the fallout from antisemitic and pedophilia-related online comments from influencers they hired to promote their brands. Unfortunately, they did not catch these comments in time. It’s not surprising that roughly 70% of brands are concerned about brand safety when working with influencers. 

Nearly 6 in 10 brands who work with influencers report being a victim of influencer fraud and, 47% of influencers share content that can get brands into trouble. In the State of Influencer Misconduct, we’re going to focus on the problematic online content that results in fired influencers, and costs the companies they partner with brand damage, revenue and customers. We will review the most common types of online misconduct that brands need to be aware of and the frequency influencers engage in this misconduct. Fama’s State of Influencer Misconduct will also provide key insights on how to protect your brand today, in 2025 and beyond.

Objectives & Methodologies

Why Fama?

Since our founding in 2015, Fama has been on a mission to protect brands from misconduct. We’re a market leader in online influencer screening. Our award-winning solutions identify the 47% of influencers who engage in online misconduct. Fama keeps brands safe from the risk of working with a problematic influencer.

Our solution compliantly and ethically searches thousands of online public sources for misconduct, and we are GDPR and SOC 2 compliant. Over 3,600 companies trust Fama to screen over 45 million people.

Research Objective

This research is designed to identify major trends in influencer misconduct to increase awareness of this issue, and offer insight into how companies can prevent, identify, and resolve misconduct that impacts brands. 

Methodologies

As of August 2024, Fama has screened tens of thousands of influencers year to date. The reports were created with the help of our proprietary machine learning algorithms, which use artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, and enhanced by natural language processing, image, and even video recognition to analyze thousands of sources of online public data, content, and profiles for misconduct. We analyzed, anonymized, and aggregated these data points to identify, classify, and quantify the prevalence of eight types of misconduct. 

The generally accepted rule for analyzing the commonality and impact of misconduct is through the 5% rule. If more than 5% of an industry is committing misconduct, then the industry fails the 5% test.

Here are the numbers behind the data points you’ll see below. 

Overview

1. Data from January to August 2024
2. 8 types of misconduct
3. Thousands reports reviewed 

Timeline

• Screenings took place between January and August 2024 
• The data in Fama reports is limited to the last 7 years

Types of Misconduct Analyzed

Posts, images, and videos shared by the influencer or content creator or articles posted about or by the creator indicating: 

1. Crime – Involvement in or support for a crime committed by someone else.
2. Violence – Advocacy, support, incitement, plans, or acts of violence.
3. Threats – Threats of physical harm to people, property damage, or controlling or intimidating content.
4. Trolling – Influencer harasses, ostracizes, shames, name-calls, or spews patronizing insults at others.
5. Intolerance – Content within a post containing racism, sexism, homophobia, racial slurs, xenophobia, antisemitism, stereotypes, or other forms of intolerance and hate speech.
6. Illicit Drugs –Influencer is speaking about, referring to, or using illicit drugs.
7. Cannabis –Influencer is speaking about, referring to, or using cannabis.
8. Sexual Content – Shares content containing or referring to sex or nudity. 

Our Findings

Influencers Share A LOT of Problematic Content 

Influencer misconduct is epidemic and much more common than many think.

After screening thousands of influencers, the results are astounding. About half (47%) of influencers we screened were flagged for online misconduct. Even worse, when an influencer was flagged for misconduct, they were flagged on average for over 30 instances of misconduct! This means there were influencers with many more than 30 instances of posts such as violence, threats, intolerance, and harassment. 

47% of all influencers screened were flagged for some sort of misconduct. That means without Fama, brands have a 1 in 2 chance of working with an influencer engaged in online conduct that could alienate customers, diminish the brand, and more. 

Even worse, almost 12% of influencers flagged for misconduct were flagged for 50 or more instances of misconduct. Almost 6% of all Influencer reports were flagged for more than 50 instances of online misconduct.

Most Common Type of Influencer Misconduct

The most common types of misconduct we found this year from influencers was trolling audiences, sexual misconduct, and intolerance/bigotry. Over 15% of misconduct we flagged included threats and almost 2% were violent or inciting violence.

‍

No brand wants someone posting brand promotions next to bigoted, sexually explicit, or trolling/harassing posts. When working with influencers as brand ambassadors, it’s important to understand how your partnership will be perceived by customers and prospects. Remember your customers are your biggest asset. If there is misconduct to find from an influencer they will find it.  Because influencers post a lot of data publicly for all to see it is very difficult for a brand to find these risk signals manually. However, the public is notorious for finding things online. It's only a matter of time before they find what you may have missed doing a manual search. This is why influencer screening is now a necessity for many major brands and Fama customers.

Influencer Misconduct Leads to Scandals in the News

When Influencers commit misconduct, brands suffer. Here are examples of recent influencer scandals that made headlines in the news, and impacted organizations they work at and partner with: 

1. With over 20M followers and over 4 billion views Shane Dawson was, and still remains, a mega influencer. In 2020 inappropriate videos resurfaced with him using racist language amongst other behavior that caused him to lose his YouTube monetization and his brand partnerships.
2. In 2020, older posts of Jeffrey Star making racist comments resurfaced. This led to major backlash from former fans and fellow beauty influencers and resulted in many sponsors and brand partners cutting ties, including the retailer Morphe Cosmetics.
3. Dr Disrespect was one of the most famous video game streamers in the world, with partnerships directly with Twitch and other major video game and related brands. In 2020, Dr Disrespect mysteriously disappeared off the Twitch platform. In 2024, Dr Disrespect and a former Twitch employee shared that Twitch not only cut ties with him as an influencer, but they also banned him from the platform for sending sexually explicit communications to minors through the platform. Since the news broke, several other major brands have also cut ties, including gaming headset company Turtle Beach, the football team the 49ers, football-related video game brand NBA 2k24, and video game studio Midnight Society. YouTube also demonetized his channel.

‍

Now let’s look at how brands can protect themselves from influencer scandals.

3 Ways to Mitigate Influencer Misconduct

There are steps brands can take to mitigate the risk of these kinds of influencer misconduct. Here are three easy steps you can take: 

1. Brand Alignment: Rather than simply partnering with influencers who have the most followers, it’s important to partner with content creators that align with your brand. This means first researching the influencer before partnering with them to understand their voice, style, and values. It also means discussing the brand's values, guidelines, and expectations to ensure alignment.
2. Contractual Obligations: Influencer marketing is a regulated marketing activity, governed by the Federal Trade Commission in the United States and other regulatory bodies around the world. Having a solid contract with influencers that lays out compliance expectations for content, disclosures, and even honesty around metrics and “social media indicators” can help. In addition, adding morality clauses in contracts that lay out behavioral expectations and would allow your brand to quickly part ways in case of a scandal is also a good idea. Standard non-disclosure agreements should also be considered if the influencer is helping to launch new products and programs. 
3. Third Party Screening for Risk: While vetting for audience size and demographic data as well as social media metrics is helpful, many brands and even influencer marketing platforms do not screen for signals of misconduct. Doing your due diligence with an independent third party that can screen at scale and over a long period of time for misconduct like intolerance, sexual harassment, and violence is key to gathering a fuller picture of who the influencer is and how a partnership will reflect on your brand. Also be sure the screening partner can screen across the platforms you use the most. For example, 80% of brands use Instagram for influencer marketing as of 2022, and 56% reported using TikTok for influencer marketing in 2023, making sure your screening partner can screen video on these platforms like Fama does is critical. 

‍

Mitigating influencer misconduct scandals doesn’t have to be a challenge. But it is important to mitigate risk and protect your brand.

Conclusion

The growing prevalence of influencer marketing comes with immense opportunities, but also significant risks. As the data from this research reveals, nearly half of influencers create online content that can pose a serious threat to brands. From parenting influencer Ruby Frank, sentenced to 30 years in prison for child abuse, to Memphis influencer Ashley Grayson, convicted of a murder-for-hire plot against a fellow local influencer and now serving 10 years, brands face a 50/50 chance of partnering with someone who has a tarnished past or present.

Behavior matters. Intolerance, violence, or trolling audiences, can tarnish a brand’s reputation in an instant, causing damage that is difficult to reverse. The examples of high-profile influencer scandals do not show signs of stopping. Brands that leverage behavior intelligence can mitigate some of this risk while benefiting from working with influencers.

Brands can and must take steps to protect themselves when partnering with influencers, employing proactive measures to mitigate risks. Aligning with influencers who reflect a brand’s values, drafting robust contractual agreements with morality clauses, and conducting thorough influencer risk screenings are essential steps to ensure a successful partnership. Taking these steps will be vital for brands to protect their reputation while leveraging the power of influencer marketing to connect with their target audiences. 

Luckily, as we move into 2025 and beyond, these steps aren’t ones brands need to take alone. The Federal Trade Commission outlines guidelines that companies and influencers should be aware of. In addition, in-house or external legal counsel can draw up protective agreements that can also help regulate the partnership. Finally, there are misconduct screening solutions, like Fama, that leverage AI and can automate enhanced due diligence, surfacing critical online misconduct like intolerance, violence, and sexual misconduct. We also encourage brands to use a partner that can also screen video-based platforms including TikTok videos and Instagram Reels staying in line with the move from text based content to video content to ensure. With the right strategy, brands can navigate the evolving landscape of influencer marketing and safeguard their long-term success. For more information on how Fama’s online screening can help, request a demo today.