The problem is "massive" in the way that Instagram itself is massive, and having a public account opens you up to a massive attack surface (i.e. the global, gro

The problem is "massive" in the way that Instagram itself is massive, and having a public account opens you up to a massive attack surface (i.e. the global, growing audience of Instagram and the Internet at-large). As in the case with Facebook and Twitter, there's only so much a social network can do without putting real controls on who can create an account and who can participate: > Like Twitter, Instagram enables the easy setup of endless anonymous accounts: All you need is an email address and you can start posting within minutes. Abusers leverage this functionality to create armies of fake accounts to attack people. But while Twitter now allows users to protect themselves—by muting replies from people who don’t follow you, who you don’t follow, aren’t verified, haven’t confirmed an email address, and more—Instagram has only implemented some of these controls. Instagram had a nicer overall "personality" to it initially because it was centered around the posting of attractive, innocuous photos. But in the end, it's still a platform that allows anyone to disseminate information of any kind (not just comments, but screenshots and images of text memes), so there's no reason to think that as it becomes massively mainstream, it won't have the exact same problems as Facebook and Twitter. edit: fixed grammar