No more influencers? Instagram starts its relentless cleanup plan
The popular app announced that it will eliminate fraudulent systems used to gain followers, likes, and comments. The most affected will be the influencers
Instagram is one of the most powerful and popular social media in the world, as its number of consumers is abysmal: it exceeds 1 billion users since June 2018, according to El Mundo. However, not all its users got their followers transparently, because there are external applications whose purpose is to increase the popularity of some users in a fraudulent way, simulating behaviors such as likes, comments, and follow-ups.
Leer en español: ¿Adiós influencers? Instagram inicia su implacable plan de limpieza
"Starting today, we will begin to eliminate comments, follow-ups and non-authentic comments from accounts that use third-party applications to increase their popularity", said Instagram in an official statement issued on November 19.
Fraud system
Third-party applications do not comply with the community norms and terms of use of Instagram, because they use the following system: people who want to gain followers quickly hire third-party applications, which keep user names and passwords of these people.
Once these fraudulent apps have access to the accounts, they give likes, follow-ups and comments on behalf of these people, that is, they generate non-authentic interactions. "Recently, we have seen that accounts use third-party applications to artificially increase their audience", the social media said in its statement, explaining that this constant activity forges an active account, which gains visibility, and therefore earns followers constantly.
Instagram’s counterattack
The social media developed a tool to detect fraudulent movements. According to Europa Press, the popular app created an autonomous learning algorithm that is able to identify these third-party applications, the behaviors they simulate, and the users who make use of these fraudulent applications.
"The accounts that we identify using these services will receive a message in the application that will notify them that we have eliminated the likes, follow-ups, and comments not provided by their account to others," the social media said in its statement.
The app will ask these detected users to change their password to ensure that their personal data does not remain in the hands of such third-party applications. Instagram's cleanup plan began the same day it issued the statement, that is, on November 19, 2018.
Why will the social media clean up?
The cleaning of Instagram is part of a Facebook decision, remember that the company Mark Zuckerberg acquired Instagram in 2012. According to CNN, the cleanup may be driven by the recent crisis suffered by Facebook because of the powerful criticism on the presence of trolls, false news, and erroneous information on their platforms.
It is for this reason that Instagram and its Facebook owner are acting relentlessly, because with this purification they seek to increase the reliability of their users and try to avoid controversies, crises, and economic losses. "It is our responsibility to ensure that these experiences are not affected by non-authentic activities", said the app that guides its platform in photographs and videos.
Also read: Virtual Influencers: the new sensation on social media
The Instagram hunt will continue
Instagram will be implacable with the issue of fraudulent activity, so he said that those who continue their non-authentic movements will have problems in the app. "These new measures will continue, and accounts that continue to use third-party applications to increase their audience can see their Instagram experience impacted", the social media said.
The app warned that this will not be the only adopted measure, because soon it will execute more. "We will have more updates in the coming weeks about the additional measures we are taking to address the non-authentic activity on Instagram", Instagram said in its statement.
The app has declared war on fraudulent systems that threaten the authenticity and originality that are promoted and protected from their offices. There will be many users affected by these measures, especially several influencers, as their splendid but fraudulent amount of followers, likes, and comments will be affected. Instagram has just taken the first step to make the application a more legitimate and transparent site.
LatinAmerican Post | Javier Aldana
Translated from “¿Adiós influencers? Instagram inicia su implacable plan de limpieza”
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