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Instagram cracks down on fake followers

Instagram cracks down on fake followers
Troy Zaher

Troy Zaher

  • Updated:

Fake followers seem more like a myth than reality, since most celebrities and high profile people don’t need fake followers since they have so many real ones. In most cases, however, these aren’t the people who are paying for fake followers. The people who do try to get fake followers are typically easy to spot, since they’ll have thousands of followers and very little likes or views on their actual content. There are tons of apps and sites specifically dedicated to giving you followers (for a price). It may not seem like a big issue, but Instagram has decided to crack down on these apps, and the fake accounts that they use.

Instagram

These “inauthentic” accounts, as Instagram calls them, are being targeted by a new software that Instagram has created specifically to hunt out inauthenticity. Accounts who are suspected to be using third party apps to increase their follower count are being contacted by Instagram with a request to change their password.

According to Instagram’s blog post on the subject, they believe that inauthentic accounts are bad for their community, and have upgraded their auto-detection and removal software to crack down. 

If you don’t know anything about fake followers and inauthentic social media activity, there have been a few YouTubers who have covered this topic. They also explain why these inauthentic activities aren’t as helpful to the user as third party apps try to make you think they are. It is not very difficult to spot inauthetic behavior, and it doesn’t help your statistics on most social media sites.

One can assume this crack down on fake accounts was spurred in early November, when Facebook announced they had removed 30 fake Facebook accounts and 85 fake Instagram accounts to curb digital interference in the midterm elections. Clearly, Instagram had a much larger portion of inauthenticity, which may have led to Instagram’s improvement of their auto-detection system.

Troy Zaher

Troy Zaher

Troy Zaher is a professional writer and journalist for Softonic, specializing in gaming and social media news. He is a 2018 graduate of Fitchburg State University with a bachelors of English.

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