So I have been doing A LOT of testing on 10+ accounts over 6 machines: my laptop on home network and 5 Azure VMs with their own data center public IPs (don’t even share the same octet) last couple weeks after my accounts got freed from the 6k/30 block and running with no problem for 3 days then the new update at the end of June basically caused my bot (heavily modified from instapy, browser+selenium for action plus API/graphql calls for scrappy) to get blocked within 10 follows. From watching all my instances (at least one on each machine, sometimes two when I tried to push limits) running getting blocked a few hundred times at various degree over the last couple weeks, here is what I’ve gathered and hopefully it’s useful for some of you too.
Besides the 6000/30day block implemented on 6/4 (account level block, once you are blocked, you are blocked even on apps and can only be resolved when you last 30day #of follows drops below 5-6K), there were at least 4 more blocks implanted at the end of June.
warning block. Even though you get a block message but you can ignore and retry immediately and follow will go through. Instapy has a verify_activity method that does immediate retry on failed action (not sure if Jarvee or whatever you guys use do as well) so often time this block is not noticeable unless you are watching the bot run 24-7.
soft block. Immediate retry wouldn’t work (this is when you get a last follow not verified warning msg from instapy), but if you wait a few minutes, you can follow again so this is probably a X actions/Y minute rate limit block. The rate limit may or may not just be for follow actions (ie there could be a follow rate limit and there are other rate limits that either can cause follow block). I also have a scrapper (separated from follow bot) that go through IG profiles every few seconds. Sometimes the crapper gets rate limited for going too fast (that rate limit has always been there, it’s not new). But last 2 weeks, I feel like when my scraper hits the rate limit (since that’s on ip level), the follow bot running on different instance of the same machine will get hit by soft block more often too.
harder block that can last a long time (like days). This one is on the session level so clearing cookies will get around the block. Not exactly sure what triggers this, I’m suspecting bot detecting AI. This was what hit my bot within 10 follows unless I changed my in between follow wait to 5+ minute then it may last for like 20-30 follows. My bot opens a page (either user’s page or random post with no pattern), does a random x second sleep, calls click() on the follow button web element, another random x second sleep, and move on. When I switch back to instapy’s follow method (which has explicit wait that’s a little more sophisticated than my random x second sleep maybe), I rarely gets this harder block.
account+browser level more serious hard block. This block whether you clear cookies or even change IP/server wouldn’t help, you would get immediately block when creating a new browser session. But it seems to be only for browser (instapy or normal), can still follow on the phone app. I only got hit by this one like 3 times and I don’t know how many days it takes to get unblocked so haven’t been able to replicated enough times to find a pattern.
1 and 2, since they go away fairly quickly (less than an hr), whatever program you are using may not alert you since they are not show stoppers like 3 and 4. But I’m not totally sure if it’s that great to get them either. I have a friend who would do very quick reply to dozens of comments under her post all at once on her app manually and get temporary action blocks that she just totally ignored and try again in a hr. Eventually she got like a month long shadow banned after getting a few of those temporary comment blocks every day for 2-3 weeks (this was in April before the automation crack down) so maybe keep an eye out for that.
I don’t use Jarvee or other softwares, can you see the followings when using EB? If so, do you actually sit there and watch the progress for extended period of time? I would love to hear what you guys have noticed from your testing too.
Prior to 6k/30 block (which is a just hard but simple limit and there is nothing more to it), I never had any blocks before. IG implemented something around 6/28-29 that’s causing serious blocks at every corner (and the pattern of blocking is much much less obvious than a hard limit) hence 2 weeks of extensive testing since then. I will keep on testing of course but just want to share what I got so far. It seems everyone is talking about getting blocked and some offer solutions to how to minimize them but after reading hundreds of posts, I have not seen one pointing out there are actually different levels of blocks that maybe caused by different things so may require different solutions.
Currently my Jarvee is following people using EB. On browsers when you follow a person, sometimes IG shows that the follow was done but actually it wasn’t. It is the warning block you mentioned on the post. I am afraid Jarvee/MP can not detect that. I might be wrong. If it is, Jarvee/MP users are in deep shit. Would you share your bot please? I want to test it.
My bot is not easily sharable. It’s attached to a 1GB+ sql database so running it is not as easy as just flip to switch on, it involves a lot of database management too to be able to run it. My bot is still not working well right now anyway, I’m still hitting hard blocks every once a while. I’m still doing a lot of changing and tweaking. I’m not even ready to put my friends’ accounts back on yet.
Look into instapy, that’s what my bot was originally based on. Instapy only uses a tiny txt file based database with minimal access by the code (unlike my bot which saves all the actions and reactions for data analysis), you won’t notice there is one from the user perspective.
Detecting the block pop up in the browser is super easy, only takes a couple lines of code. If Jarvee EB is selenium based, just look for web element like this
blockedHeader=browser.find_elements_by_xpath("//div/div/div[1]/h3[contains(text(), ‘Action Blocked’)]")
if len(blockdHeader)>0:
logger.info(’=========> follow block’)
Shadowban isn’t a real “action” block. Many users here already experimented a shadowban, and if you ask them, they will tell you this :
My reach got killed.
Instead of being blocked from follow, like, etc. a shadowban will drastically decrease the exposure of your posts : your hashtags won’t reach anyone -or almost- and it can last for months.
shadow banning is just another way for IG to punish people for doing something they don’t like. It’s more subtle than an action block because unless you look at your analytics constantly, you won’t even notice. When your impression is low from hashtags and you suspect if you are shadow banned, one way to test is to use a obscure hashtag with not a lot of posts. If you are not even ranked in a tiny hashtag, you are shadow banned. Usually you would still show up in recent tab of the hashtag but I have seen shadow bans that make you not show up in recent tab too.
I don’t think so but I only have one sample size. I know someone who just bought 10K fake users dripped over 2-3 days. Impression of those days dropped a ton from both existing followers and hashtag but not completely shadow banned.
I don’t know if getting fake followers is that great of an idea in general. If hashtag ranking algorithm is based on engagement rate (number of engagement/total followers) instead of number of engagement then you basically just screwed yourself permanently with a bunch of inactive followers. I don’t know how if algorithm use engagement rate or number for sure but I don’t want to use my own account to find out.
Thanks for the info! I noticed that jarvee likes on embedded browser won’t stick on occasion, but there is no error message on jarvee…is that a soft block? Re-setting cookies doesn’t help and it seems to go away on its own. It happens every few days? Liking on the app itself is always fine
