If you’ve ever gotten comments from randos, it’s probably Insta bots
Have you ever gotten a comment on your Instagram post that didn’t make any sense?
For example, sometimes when I post a pic of spaghetti on my food account, I’ll get a comment from a rando user that says, “so stylish.”
Um…excuse me? I know pasta is great and all, but I wouldn’t ever describe it as stylish. Maybe mouth-watering, sexy, or even sensual – but not stylish.
But instead of perplexing over why on earth LouboutinLover12 can’t finagle an appropriate comment for my amazing foodie pics, I brushed it off, because I know all about Instagram bots. Do you?
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You see, as more and more people clamor to become Insta-famous and live the dream of hawking detox teas, businesses have popped up offering their Instagram engagement “services.”
Basically, you pay a fee, and the business enables their service – which is generally an automated army of bots, who will sign into your Instagram account and go forth commenting and liking other users’ photos. Certain services, like Archie, will allow you to choose what “types” of users you want to engage with (say, fashion and beauty) and also let you choose which locations of users you want to engage with.
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Naturally, these bots aren’t perfect, so sometimes a bot accidentally comments “this looks delicious” on a picture of a sunset.
And you might not want to get too used to their presence because these bots are getting attacked by Instagram – or their parent company, Facebook – even more swiftly lately as part of the businesses’ recent campaign against Instagram growth hacking.
According to The New York Times, Instagram has shut down the sites Instagress, PeerBoost, InstaPlus, Mass Planner and Fan Harvest, although other ones (like the aforementioned Archie) are still up and running.
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I also frequently get emails from randos that have started new engagement apps and are wondering if I want to test out a free trial. Thanks, but as much as I want to give my Instagram log-in info to someone I’ve never met, I’m gonna pass.
With all the fake ways to grow engagement that have been exposed lately, it makes you wonder, “should I just take a short cut and start getting paid to post selfies?” But businesses are starting to wake up to the fakeness. More and more businesses working with influencers are starting to be interested in engagement (the percentage of followers who actually like and comment on someone’s post) rather than solely followers.
And, when someone inevitably comes out with a site that can allegedly determine someone’s real followers – or Instagram decides to start deleting bot accounts rapidly – you won’t get exposed.
So resist the temptation and keep your ass covered – because it wouldn’t be surprising if in addition to trying to delete these engagement sites, Instagram also starts punishing the people who use them. It’s better to have 1,000 real followers than 20,000 fake ones!
