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The promo video includes "Click Social Media Buttons: This bot only clicks on the social media button if it has not already been liked or followed" [vid]. I can

The promo video includes "Click Social Media Buttons: This bot only clicks on the social media button if it has not already been liked or followed" [vid]. I can't think of the intended use case; how do you envision this might be used? [vid]: https://youtu.be/D3dqsZ1fyCU?t=112 https://youtu.be/D3dqsZ1fyCU?t=112

yaseer 7y ago
In private beta, a lot of users were using axiom to automate their likes and follows, to build up an audience on Instagram. They were doing this work manually in any case. We would not want this to be done at scale, in a cloud, like a nefarious bot-farm. However, at the scale of a bot tied to a single individual's browser, doing repetitive work in growth-marketing and sales, we'd allow this usage.
- michaelmior 7y ago
  Isn't this a violation of Instagram's ToS?
  - yaseer 7y ago
    https://help.instagram.com/1188470931252371 https://help.instagram.com/1188470931252371 Creating user accounts with bots, and crawling certainly is, but I can't see anything about automating likes (correct me if I'm wrong). There are many chrome extensions which do specifically automate likes on the Chrome store. Ours is just a chrome extension for general browser automation, where this is just one use-case.
    - fenwick67 7y ago
      "We prohibit crawling, scraping, caching or otherwise accessing any content on the Service via automated means" ... "You must not create or submit unwanted email, comments, likes or other forms of commercial or harassing communications (a/k/a "spam") to any Instagram users."
      - yaseer 7y ago
        Okay, I agree this a grey and perhaps questionable area. This seemed to be something legitimate people/users were doing a lot, so we gave them a building block to make it easier. Maybe we should have thought about it more. We'll take a step back from that path if our bots become a nuisance on social media. In all honesty, we built axiom with other things in mind (e.g. Repetitive data entry and admin).
        alwayseasy 7y ago
        It's not grey it's a TOS violation. Facebook goes after these types of bots ruthlessly, especially in election season. I'd recommend not poking that bear, you have so many market opportunities!
        yaseer 7y ago
        Okay, we'll take this on board! It was honestly just some user requests we integrated without enough thought, not something nefarious. This isn't our market by any means.
        fenwick67 7y ago
        No, we disagree because it's pretty black and white. It wasn't hard to Ctrl+f for "like" and "automat" in the TOS. Your team needs to do better.
        yaseer 7y ago
        Look, we've changed position and agree with you. The point I thought was 'grey' was whether automated likes harass people (Liking to build a following is now part of the standard Instagram marketing playbook). That is not worth debating though - we agree that TOS are violated. We were wrong and you are correct.

yaseer 7y ago

In private beta, a lot of users were using axiom to automate their likes and follows, to build up an audience on Instagram. They were doing this work manually in any case. We would not want this to be done at scale, in a cloud, like a nefarious bot-farm. However, at the scale of a bot tied to a single individual's browser, doing repetitive work in growth-marketing and sales, we'd allow this usage.

michaelmior 7y ago
Isn't this a violation of Instagram's ToS?
- yaseer 7y ago
  https://help.instagram.com/1188470931252371 https://help.instagram.com/1188470931252371 Creating user accounts with bots, and crawling certainly is, but I can't see anything about automating likes (correct me if I'm wrong). There are many chrome extensions which do specifically automate likes on the Chrome store. Ours is just a chrome extension for general browser automation, where this is just one use-case.
  - fenwick67 7y ago
    "We prohibit crawling, scraping, caching or otherwise accessing any content on the Service via automated means" ... "You must not create or submit unwanted email, comments, likes or other forms of commercial or harassing communications (a/k/a "spam") to any Instagram users."
    - yaseer 7y ago
      Okay, I agree this a grey and perhaps questionable area. This seemed to be something legitimate people/users were doing a lot, so we gave them a building block to make it easier. Maybe we should have thought about it more. We'll take a step back from that path if our bots become a nuisance on social media. In all honesty, we built axiom with other things in mind (e.g. Repetitive data entry and admin).
      - alwayseasy 7y ago
        It's not grey it's a TOS violation. Facebook goes after these types of bots ruthlessly, especially in election season. I'd recommend not poking that bear, you have so many market opportunities!
        yaseer 7y ago
        Okay, we'll take this on board! It was honestly just some user requests we integrated without enough thought, not something nefarious. This isn't our market by any means.
      - fenwick67 7y ago
        No, we disagree because it's pretty black and white. It wasn't hard to Ctrl+f for "like" and "automat" in the TOS. Your team needs to do better.
        yaseer 7y ago
        Look, we've changed position and agree with you. The point I thought was 'grey' was whether automated likes harass people (Liking to build a following is now part of the standard Instagram marketing playbook). That is not worth debating though - we agree that TOS are violated. We were wrong and you are correct.