New data has shown that ‘de-influencing’ videos make audiences more likely to trust an influencer in the future but have no immediate effect on their perception of the product in question.
The #deinfluencing hashtag reached 1 billion views on TikTok in 2023. A further upswell in popularity arrived last year, with mentions of de-influencing on social media surging by 79% in 2025 according to Brandwatch.
The study published in the Journal of Interactive Advertising last month found that young adults who were shown influencer videos advising not to buy a fictitious brand or product showed ‘no difference’ in their perception of the brand or intent to purchase, but were more likely to trust the influencer in the future. Indeed, a negative review was considered ‘significantly more helpful’ than a positive one in determining the reviewer’s trustworthiness.
The authors of the study suggest that this increased trust in influencers who give negative reviews means that brands should seek to get endorsements from those influencers in the future, as they will be viewed as more credible than those from an influencer with no prior history, or even a positive relationship, with the brand. However, the researchers only showed the participants in their experiment one negative video, so they can’t know this for sure.
The researchers did however refer to an article published by Chakraborti and Bhat in 2017, which found that the reliability of previous reviews is one of the most important factors in how credible consumers find a review.
Perhaps more interesting to brands than an opportunity to find influencers who are seen as more credible is the potential this study reveals for an adversarial relationship between influencers and brands. If influencers can gain a more loyal following with each negative review, there is an incentive to be negative — although, of course, being positive about a brand can be beneficial as well. The study concludes that influencers should consider including de-influencing videos in their content ‘to shape long-term trust and potentially even follower loyalty’, but maintains that, if Chakraborty and Bhat are correct: ‘De-influencing can eventually be damaging for brands because perceived review helpfulness may drive future decisions to avoid the corresponding products or brands’.
The study’s authors ultimately seem to decide that the best path for influencers is to continue producing these videos for as long as they continue to perform well and generate trust, and that brands should make sure to watch out for these videos, address the concerns raised in them about the products, and potentially even court future positive reviews from those same influencers.
In the world of social media, however, ‘as long as they perform well’ can be a variable time frame.
“Don’t Buy It!” Influencers’ Negative Product Reviews and Their Effects on Young Adults by Darian Harff and Doan Phuong Nhi Le was published in Journal of Interactive Advertising on 26 January.
