fbpx
Subscribe
Menu

Instagram Is Cracking Down On Services That Sell ‘Likes’ And Followers

Instagram Is Cracking Down On Services That Sell ‘Likes’ And Followers

Written by Ann Brown

Nov 28, 2018

Subscribe

On social media, it’s all about the “likes.” But Instagram has just cracked down on fake likes or likes that have been paid for.

The site says it is no longer allowing “inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity.” That includes buying “likes,” followers, and paying for other engagement generated by apps that require a user’s Instagram login details in order to operate on their behalf, Recode reported.


Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 23: Everette Taylor
Jamarlin talks to serial entrepreneur and marketing whiz, Everette Taylor, about building GrowthHackers, PopSocial and other companies. Everette shares what he learned from selling his first tech business at age 21 and working with Snapchat on a new startup accelerator.

Instagram now has built machine-learning tools to help detect such accounts.

It seems many Instagram influencers have paid for “likes” from services that sell “likes” and followers online.

This has been going on for some time, so why is Instagram, which was purchased by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012, just now focusing on fake “likes”?  

Here’s a logical guess. Facebook is under more pressure than ever to police the activity on its platforms, given all that has happened with privacy issues and Russian election meddling since 2016, Recode reported.

Instagram says it has some more changes in the pipeline. “We’ll have more updates in the coming weeks on additional measures we’re taking to tackle inauthentic activity on Instagram,” the company stated on its blog.

instagram
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

 

Changes include deleting accounts that go against the rules. Earlier this month, Facebook announced it had removed 85 Instagram accounts that were believed to be engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior, NBC News reported. However, Instagram has been scrutinized for not doing enough to remove hate posts from its site, while focusing instead on other targets such as censoring photos of nudity.

The photo-sharing app now boasts more than 1 billion monthly active users.

Instagram isn’t the only social media outlet cracking down. Twitter considered getting rid of “likes” altogether. According to Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey, Twitter has been pondering getting rid of the heart-shaped button as a way to improve conversation on the platform, according to the British daily The Telegraph.

But don’t fret, Twitter isn’t doing this — at least not anytime soon.

In a statement, Twitter said the like button and many other features are merely being assessed so the company can encourage “healthy conversation,” but there are no immediate plans for changes.

“As we’ve been saying for a while, we are rethinking everything about the service to ensure we are incentivizing healthy conversation, that includes the like button,” the company said. “We are in the early stages of the work and have no plans to share right now.”

✖