Now too many projects nowadays make it easier for us to put money in, but what I usually do is invest in new projects with a large number of social media followers, if it's on a telegram or discord group then we can know whether the discussion is natural or just settings.
If they have large number of followers, it's either they got it from social media campaigns which is you shouldn't see the numbers only. I would prefer to just look into the project and follow/research the roadmap of each projects you are interested to. Followers can get manipulated pretty easy especially this date where people can get more followers by doing bounties.
A lot of things to consider before investing your money. You are right with paid followers. It's not hard to deal with that
since most scam developers are also investing with how they can allure more investors, they can spend money from different kind
of engagements to make it look professional.
Afterwards they will simply runaway once they already reached the target amount to bag, you really need to go deep with your
research before releasing any amount.