The terms of service are the contract your account operates under, and on growth they converge: every major platform prohibits inauthentic engagement in its text. The honest questions are what that covers, and how it's actually enforced. The answers are less dramatic than the folklore.
The recurring clauses: no fake or misleading engagement, no automation on user accounts outside approved APIs, no buying or selling ACCOUNTS, no coordinated manipulation.
The paperwork stacks: terms of service (the contract) above community guidelines (the content rules), with violations voiding protections up to termination. No major platform blesses purchased engagement in writing; anyone claiming otherwise hasn't read it.
Platforms enforce against SUPPLY and INFRASTRUCTURE far more than against buyers: purges delete the fake accounts, detection hunts automation networks, and delivered counts simply decay.
Documented buyer-side outcomes cluster on credential tools and spam behaviour, not on counts arriving at a public handle. The evidence on the most-feared version, shadowbans for buying followers, is thinner than the folklore. None of which deletes the clause: every buyer is pricing a written rule, knowingly.
Against platform terms: yes, the inauthentic-engagement clauses cover it. Against the law: generally no, in most places. The risk is contractual, priced in decay and enforcement patterns described above.
Documented account losses in growth cluster on credential automation, spam and fake-account operation. Buyer-side bans for mere receiving are the folklore's claim, not the record's. Treat that as odds, not immunity.
The no-password rule, graded stock, gradual pacing, believable proportion, and a provider that answers support. Every one of those choices lowers the only risks the record actually shows.
Related terms
Every definition lives in the full glossary, and the services behind the vocabulary are on the services page.