Finfluencer engagement is not evidence of credibility
Online financial content reaches millions, despite misleading signals, weak disclosures and limited creator qualifications.
A new analysis by Legalaes reveals that financial advice on social media is popular but often misleading, despite the creators lacking proper qualifications. The study examined 1,764 English-language finance-related videos across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, which together garnered 692.6 million views and 34.8 million likes.
Interestingly, misleading videos received significantly more views than non-misleading content. Only 2.2% of the 1,266 unique financial influencers behind these videos had relevant financial qualifications. YouTube had the highest proportion of misleading content (41.8%), while Instagram and TikTok followed at 26.8% and 23%, respectively.
Interestingly, YouTube also had the highest share of accurate videos (38.3%). The research identified three key risk signals: promoting paid products, suggesting specific returns, guaranteeing returns, or providing inaccurate advice. A video could be accurate but still misleading if it included these risk signals. Only 11.7% of the sampled videos included disclaimers, and a significant number of traders (36.4%) promoted paid products or services.
Consumers are advised to critically evaluate financial content on social media, checking creators' qualifications, looking for disclaimers, and evaluating claims against established investment principles.
Written by urgent.news from ITWeb's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
