If you own an Instagram account, I’m willing to bet that you’ve stumbled across paid posts by accounts touted as ‘Social Media Influencers’.

It’s nothing surprising, really, that businesses have seen the potential of such people with huge followings as an effective outreach tool, since most people will more likely pay attention to something on their feed than a printed advertisement on the street.

Such sponsored posts apparently do pay quite well, which is why some people have started trying to cash in on the action by making their accounts seem popular, and Instagram isn’t happy about this.

In order to attain the perceived status of being an ‘Influencer’, these accounts buy likes, comments, and followers at a cheap price from third-party apps and within seconds, their notifications will be swarmed with the actions of bots programmed to fake this popularity.

It is likely that they’re hoping that if companies see that they have thousands of likes and followers, then they’ll offer them money for an advertisement. It’s a cheap and lazy attempt and it’s really fooling no one.

I mean, if a blurry and aesthetically unappealing shot has thousands of likes and many similar comments along the lines of “OMG! LOVE IT!!”, wouldn’t it look obviously fake?

Unfortunately, not many people have realized what an unfeasible idea this is and as third-party apps that provide such fake popularity continue to thrive, Instagram is overrun with spam posts and poor-quality photos that make it onto the Explore page solely because of the likes that have been bought.

This has apparently become a cause for concern for Instagram because recently, it has taken action against such apps and closed them down, effectively attempting to halt the ongoing trend of false popularity.

One such site would be Instagress, where you could have bought likes for as low as $2 for 3 days, but the service has since been terminated.

In addition, Instagram has blocked posts with overly spammy hashtags from the search or Explore tag. You know, those posts that have dozens or maybe a hundred irrelevant hashtags, in an desperate attempt for someone, anyone, to come across it? Yup, off with those too!

This likely spells despair and doom for such wannabe ‘Influencers’ since it’s going to be harder for them to buy such an impressive profile, or to get their posts out there for the world to see.

But for the rest of us casual Instagram users, it’s a huge relief since we will come across less spam content and instead can discover and enjoy more high-quality posts.

I mean, if you really want to become popular, wouldn’t it feel better to actually pick up some skills to show in your posts and then gain followers of your own merit? You can’t have meaningful interaction with those spam bot accounts like you can with genuine followers.

With the crackdown on these phony ‘Influencers’, here’s to hoping that Instagram regains its quality social networking site status and that businesses find real popular accounts to help market their products and services!

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This article was first published on goodyfeed.com

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