Instagram goes after accounts with fake followers, likes: Details here
What's the story
Popular photo-sharing service Instagram has vowed to combat apps boosting the audience of its users.
The company has started removing fake followers, likes, and comments from accounts using these services.
As part of the same effort, it will also be notifying the users of these services, warning them to stop and change their passwords.
Here's more.
Follower story
Follower count defines influencers
Over the years, Instagram has evolved into a platform, where people are paid for promoting a brand or its products.
These so-called 'influencers' are partly defined by the audience or the number of followers they have on the platform.
This has pushed more and more users, even well-known celebrities, to buy fake followers and likes via automated apps.
Apps
How these apps work?
Typically, these bot-based apps try to boost popularity by artificially increasing engagement and getting others to follow back.
For this, the service providers take Instagram username and passwords of their customers (the user) and log into their account, allowing the bots automatically like, comment on, and follow accounts associated with certain hashtags.
Instagram's action
But now, Instagram will remove such followers, likes
As inauthentic activity raises questions over Instagram's legitimacy and affects the quality of conversation, the platform has started removing fake followers.
The company has said it has integrated machine learning-based tools to identify accounts using these apps and remove their activity.
After this, it will send a notification to these users asking them to change their passwords to end ties with these services.
Instagram's action
Also, continuing with these services will affect Instagram experience
In case, a user continues with these services even after receiving a warning and having their followers removed, their Instagram experience will be impacted.
It is not clear how Instagram would do that, but a spokesperson from the company told TechCrunch, it might disable certain features for these users such as their ability to follow people.