- The majority of 'users currently see this project' are looking a few hours back instead of being 100% fake. All of them allow faking the numbers somehow tho. There are plenty of 100% fake ones out there too tho.
- 'xxx just bought' things are usually real too. But also out of context and time. Plus all plugins I've seen allow you to add custom fake ones. Or even have some preenabled.
- While I was looking for the functionality to actually lock products when they are in a cart for 15 minutes or so because we have limited stock I found none of these plugins is actually doing this. All they do is adding a cookie and a fake timer.
There is more, way more. And I learned to avoid shops using any of those fake tactics.
In the end I wrote many of that stuff my own with real data and I don't think users will ever notice the difference :/