When it comes to social media – especially Instagram – having the most number of likes, followers and comments is often seen as a matter of pride. People go to great lengths to get as much as followers, likes and comments on their accounts as they can. In doing so, users often resort to buying likes, followers and comments, and believe us, there are businesses booming out there which offer just that. However, at the end of the day, all this is fake, and, in a bid to crackdown such inauthentic activities, Instagram has announced that it will start weeding out fake likes, followers and comments from accounts.
Instagram has announced that it will start removing fake likes, follows, and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to appear popular by showing an increased number of likes, follows and comments on their accounts. The company said that it will begin its crackdown on such inauthentic activities by using its machine learning tool that will identify accounts that use such services.
Instagram also said that those accounts that have been found using these third-party services to boost their popularity will receive an in-app message (refer image above) from Instagram alerting them of the removal of fake likes, follows and comments from their accounts. Furthermore, Instagram will also ask these accounts to change their password to secure their accounts from unauthorized access by third-party apps and services, because when people use such third-party services, they share their login credentials which are then used by third-party services for likes, follows and comments.
In addition to that, Instagram said that changing account password will also revoke access to your account, meaning third-party apps and services will no longer be able to access your account.
“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. 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.” said Instagram in a blog post.
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“Today’s update is just another step in keeping Instagram a vibrant community where people connect and share in authentic ways. We’ll have more updates in the coming weeks on additional measures we’re taking to tackle inauthentic activity on Instagram.” Instagram further added.
Are you one of those who make use of third-party apps and services to increase likes, comments and followers?
