Buying Fake Instagram Followers? You May Want To Read This

Published on November 27, 2018

Ever notice that some of your friends seem to magically have an absurd amount of followers out of nowhere? Odds are they bought them.

Instagram is working on cracking down on accounts that purchase fake followers or likes through third-party apps. Many users commonly purchase these things through third-party apps to grow their reach and engagements inorganically. The social media app is working on implementing a lot of new changes. These changes will be to both physical aspects and technical aspects of the app that improve user experience. The app is also trying to focus on removing the emphasis of follower count in user profiles.

The Details

“Recently, we’ve seen accounts use third-party apps to artificially grow their audience. Every day people come to Instagram to have real experiences, including genuine interactions. It is our responsibility to ensure these experiences aren’t disrupted by inauthentic activity. Starting today, we will begin removing inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity,” the company wrote in a blog post on its website. The company wants its users to feel as if they’re having a more authentic experience on the site.

The blog post goes on to explain that it may be implementing consequences to accounts that are caught using these third-party apps to change their engagements. “We’ve built machine learning tools to help identify accounts that use these services and remove the inauthentic activity. This type of behavior is bad for the community, and third-party apps that generate inauthentic likes, follows and comments violate our Community Guidelines and Terms of Use,” the blog post says.

More Changes

Instagram also plans to change the appearance of profiles to shift the focus of the profile page to the individual rather than the follower count. The change will move the profile image to the right side of the page, rather than the left. It will also shift the font sizes on different elements of the page to make things like the users name, biography and other information larger than the follower count. The social media company has also decided to move the follower account to the bottom of the profile heading. The company announced its plans in a blog post on its press-page. None of these changes will impact the photo grid, though.

The social media app wants its users to focus more on expressing themselves rather than worrying about engagement and followers. The changes that they’re implementing will be popping up over the next few weeks. Instagram has already began cracking down on fake followers and likes, though, so if you’re using any apps to do gain engagements it may be a good idea to stop before you’re caught.

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Julia Sachs is a former Managing Editor at Grit Daily. She covers technology, social media and disinformation. She is based in Utah and before the pandemic she liked to travel.

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