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| iPhone 7 screen Instagram |
Instagram is cracking down on fake
account activity with the closing of Instagress, a popular third-party service
that advertised itself as an automated way to "get real Instagram
followers and become incredibly popular."
Instagress said it was forced to
shut down its service, which let people pay to have their accounts
automatically like and comment on other photos, "by
request of Instagram" on Thursday. The tool is "like
creating a small robot clone of yourself with the same interests and style, and
then letting it work for you on Instagram" to gain followers, according to
the now-shuttered Instagress website.
In a recent
post on PetaPixel, a photographer named Calder Wilson described how
he used Instagress for two years to like thousands of photos and make thousands
of comments per month. "In an environment where we equate more likes and
followers with better photos and better photographers, for many think it’s a
no-brainer to bot their account," he wrote.
It's unclear how many users paid for
Instagress, which had cost $10 per month, but the service had been
operational for at least three years before shutting down on Thursday. A 2015 research
study estimated that around 8% of all Instagram
accounts were likely automated spam accounts, and that hundreds of third-party
services sold fake followers or fraudulent activity on the platform.
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