8 ms·

Real People Are Turning Their Accounts into Bots on Instagram

56 points by prostoalex 9y ago

Demcox 9y ago
12,000USD..... Holy sh*t that is good money for just having a RPie running!
- pletnes 9y ago
  I’ll sell you mine for $1000. OK?
  - ct0 9y ago
    the code is worth money, not the hardware
    - jstanley 9y ago
      I think that was the point - it's not $12k just for having a RPi running.
      - pletnes 9y ago
        Points aside, the rpi is still for sale at $1000.
        Demcox 9y ago
        Yeah sure, just send me your full name, address, phone number, credit card info and picture of your driving license then I'll mail the dollars to you!
      - Demcox 9y ago
        Exactly.
detaro 9y ago
previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946900
misterbowfinger 9y ago
At first I figured Instagram would just rate-limit likes/comments via the API, but these people are handing over their account & password to services like Fuelgram.... Although I don't think that's a bad idea in principle - everyone has a set amount of likes & comments they can do per day. It'd make the value of a "like" much higher (a la Tinder).
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  Even with rate limits, you know there will be people that do thousands of interactions a day on instagram - more than enough for bots to work with.
jankotek 9y ago
> Viral Hippo posted a photo of a black square. > And yet within 24 hours, it amassed over 1,500 likes from a group that included a verified model followed by 296,000 people Are you sure it is fake? Modern art has long history of similar stunts.'Viralhippo' account has good following and posts memes, black square could easily go viral.
- vuln 9y ago
  BuzzFeed created the Viral Hippo account and black square post.
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  You realize that verified accounts don't get all their followers legitimately, right? All those folks you constantly see following you? Yeah, they're not doing that because they think you're swell; they're automated follows in the hopes you follow back,and then they unfollow soon after or some time later to lower their following count.
dfee 9y ago
Instagram is aware of this, and I’d be surprised if they found out through BuzzFeed News that this was happening. So maybe this isn’t a bad thing for Instagram?
- t1o5 9y ago
  There is one for twitter which is https://autotweeter.in https://autotweeter.in which claims to tweet and upload fotos incessantly by reading it from an excel sheet.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  It's the same problem Twitter has, and like them, they could argue that any activity is good activity.
strgrd 9y ago
My impression is that SV and ycombinator types are completely unwilling, or ambivalent to this problem, and mainly because these grey market like-bots only make their platforms look more popular, and give content creators a pay-to-win process towards what appears as social media success. They gloss over points like this: "The risk of realizing that the internet is massively manipulated is that the cognitive overhead to process even the most basic interactions increases, suspicion increases, polarization potentially increases."
- justboxing 9y ago
  > or ambivalent to this problem It's not a 'problem' for Instagram if it results in increased revenues from the increase engagement, even if it is from falsely inflated follower numbers, posts, comments, activity etc. > In other words, Fuelgram creates fake engagement from real Instagram accounts. And it's quite effective. Fuelgram makes posts appear more popular than they are, tricking Instagram's algorithm into spreading them further, sometimes right into the service's high-profile Explore tab.
ishanjain28 9y ago
Just in case anyone doubts this story, I have built 6 of these Instagram engagement bots within last month that operate on telegram and are used to monitor engagement of all the people who signed up.

56 points by prostoalex 9y ago

Demcox 9y ago

12,000USD..... Holy sh*t that is good money for just having a RPie running!

pletnes 9y ago
I’ll sell you mine for $1000. OK?
- ct0 9y ago
  the code is worth money, not the hardware
  - jstanley 9y ago
    I think that was the point - it's not $12k just for having a RPi running.
    - pletnes 9y ago
      Points aside, the rpi is still for sale at $1000.
      - Demcox 9y ago
        Yeah sure, just send me your full name, address, phone number, credit card info and picture of your driving license then I'll mail the dollars to you!
    - Demcox 9y ago
      Exactly.

detaro 9y ago

previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946900

misterbowfinger 9y ago

At first I figured Instagram would just rate-limit likes/comments via the API, but these people are handing over their account & password to services like Fuelgram.... Although I don't think that's a bad idea in principle - everyone has a set amount of likes & comments they can do per day. It'd make the value of a "like" much higher (a la Tinder).

Cthulhu_ 9y ago
Even with rate limits, you know there will be people that do thousands of interactions a day on instagram - more than enough for bots to work with.

jankotek 9y ago

> Viral Hippo posted a photo of a black square. > And yet within 24 hours, it amassed over 1,500 likes from a group that included a verified model followed by 296,000 people Are you sure it is fake? Modern art has long history of similar stunts.'Viralhippo' account has good following and posts memes, black square could easily go viral.

vuln 9y ago
BuzzFeed created the Viral Hippo account and black square post.
RandomInteger4 9y ago
You realize that verified accounts don't get all their followers legitimately, right? All those folks you constantly see following you? Yeah, they're not doing that because they think you're swell; they're automated follows in the hopes you follow back,and then they unfollow soon after or some time later to lower their following count.

dfee 9y ago

Instagram is aware of this, and I’d be surprised if they found out through BuzzFeed News that this was happening. So maybe this isn’t a bad thing for Instagram?

t1o5 9y ago
There is one for twitter which is https://autotweeter.in https://autotweeter.in which claims to tweet and upload fotos incessantly by reading it from an excel sheet.
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
It's the same problem Twitter has, and like them, they could argue that any activity is good activity.

strgrd 9y ago

My impression is that SV and ycombinator types are completely unwilling, or ambivalent to this problem, and mainly because these grey market like-bots only make their platforms look more popular, and give content creators a pay-to-win process towards what appears as social media success. They gloss over points like this: "The risk of realizing that the internet is massively manipulated is that the cognitive overhead to process even the most basic interactions increases, suspicion increases, polarization potentially increases."

justboxing 9y ago
> or ambivalent to this problem It's not a 'problem' for Instagram if it results in increased revenues from the increase engagement, even if it is from falsely inflated follower numbers, posts, comments, activity etc. > In other words, Fuelgram creates fake engagement from real Instagram accounts. And it's quite effective. Fuelgram makes posts appear more popular than they are, tricking Instagram's algorithm into spreading them further, sometimes right into the service's high-profile Explore tab.

ishanjain28 9y ago

Just in case anyone doubts this story, I have built 6 of these Instagram engagement bots within last month that operate on telegram and are used to monitor engagement of all the people who signed up.