Instagram Is Cracking Down On Services That Sell Likes, Followers

Instagram will be cutting down on the services that let you buy followers or likes. Starting Monday, Instagram says it will no longer allow 'inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity.' That includes buying 'Likes' and followers, and paying for other engagement generated by apps that require a user's Instagram login details in order to operate on their behalf. Recode reports: Instagram says it 'built machine learning tools' to help detect accounts growing artificially. The move is not retroactive, so Instagram won't be removing 'Likes' or followers that accounts have already garnered. It's just going to prevent them in the future. Instagram doesn't list any specific apps or services on its blog post, so it's tough to tell which third-party services will be impacted by this. This kind of activity has been against Instagram's Terms of Service for a while, so it's not entirely clear why Instagram wants to crack down on this now. Here's a logical guess though: Facebook is under more pressure than ever to police the activity on its platforms, given all that has happened with Facebook and Russian election meddling since 2016.

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