Hi, i know that you guys experience the same so let`s speak about it: IG accounts are being massively haunted by spam accounts on a daily basis. This includes all kinds of bots: sex, random spam, accounts from a very unrelated part of the world. All of these accounts share the same pattern. They look spammy from the go, have the same name with all kinds of variations like trailing numbers etc. and they have far less followers than followings. You all know what i talk about.
I dont want to go into the question why Facebook/IG doesnt take action against these accounts. That can be a different conversation. I want to talk about the purpose or mission of these accounts. I reckon that only a small portion of these accounts have a clear mission. These are the sex accounts which show their buts and boobies to attract people to some fishy website. But the big chunk of accounts that are haunting us do not show a clear mission. So what is their mission then? I think that their creators don`t do it just for fun, do they?!
My first thought was: hey, they are “competitors” who want to tear down your engagement rate. But is this really true? I spent some time to block those users on a daily basis. I thought that when i do this consistently, i get an edge over other accounts who are being followed but dont do anything about it. Reason for this thinking is that those spam accounts dont engage with your content and if this goes for big parts of your audience, then the IG algo thinks that you are putting out bad content. But to my surprise, this effort did not really pay off. Whether i leave them as followers or block them, the result is not significantly different. Also other accounts who do not take action against those accounts do not significantly suffer from decreasing engagement rates.
So 2 questions as a basis for discussion fam:
What is the mission of those accounts (apart from the sex bots)?
what is best practice to handle those spam followers? Leave them or block them?
well, lets turn the table.
1, what is the purpose of this post( apart from info.)?
2. what is the best practice to reply to these types of questions? Reply or ignore them?
People make money off them. Do you need to know more? okay
more means more money. Your question what is the mission?
well, how do you pay your bills?
how do you pay rent?
money, thats how.
If you haven’t figured out the mission is to make money for the creators – where ya been the last few years?
wow, crazy replies here. Seems that i fucked you guys up because you are on the other side. Great that it is working for you. So let us leave it for now. if a random “araianamtatheko” with 25 followers, 434 followings no bio, no posts, no picture follows me on IG then i wonder why. That is basically all i want to know. No front, no bullshitting around, no turning the table, just knowledge. if this is not the forum to discuss this. Well, i thought it was. but probably not.
common sense tells ya spam accounts are for making money, even if it pollutes the social media platform.
your question over thinks a simple thing. Income. Please don’t take offense. After all why is red, red
?
ok maybe i have to rephrase: how can the creators of this account “araianamtatheko” (just a random example) make money? They have nothing to sell on their account. They follow accounts with thousands or millions of followers. Let me point out: i understand what sex bots try to achieve but not an account which has nothing in it. You might say: they want attention by following. But those accounts will never bother if another bot/spam account follows or not. They will not send DMs and engage with whatever they are then trying to sell via DM.
AM i wrong? As you said as well, my post here is not meant to offend or front anyone, just trying to understand first of all. If you are not about to share that info. Well, lesson learned. But i want to keep communication straight.
how? it provides traffic to sources be it a website, link, offer what have you. It promotes many times over than one single account.
say I have a picture of a hot human( male or famale) with a link for nudes – that link ya gotta pay to see them.
The more accounts you have the greater the number of chances somebody will send money. ( I used sex as an example but can be many other types of business.
and i totally get you on that one. that`s why i wanted to exclude the sex topic from this thread. But there are so many accounts like the one i mentioned that have nothing to offer, no butt pic, no link in bio, no nothing. So if their creators take the time to bulk create all the accounts and follow accounts, why are they not spending the time to tell about what they are trying to sell?
You’re just not understanding what he’s saying. That’s how it works.
They follow users with crappy profiles because it doesn’t matter at the beginning, or ever. People are ignorant and follow back anyone who follows them. The “spam” accounts as you call them build a follower base to look more legitimate, then add bio links eventually, or just DM people who follow them back with links/offers/other pages to follow that do have bio links. That all results in money for clicks or subscriptions (porn, affiliate sites, etc) eventually.
ok cool. First of all thanks for finding a base of communication! appreciated.
So if i am trying to build social proof, can i do this with an account that has 20 follows and following 400 people and with no nothing in my profile, never post, etc? Also i can DM people without following them in first step, right?
Ok it seems that this works for you guys. Even in times where IG tries to stop the automation game. Good luck. I`ll shut up.
Highly impossible if their intention is negative campaign, why destroy competitor ER if intention was negative campaign? Use that spam accs for mass report your content / acc using custom bot way more better than blast your accs with fake follower
Hm… how can you know that spam accs is sex bot? You said yourself, no profile pic, no bio link + description
Maybe their true intention are warming up bot accs, they follow random accs that has 10k++ with good ER just for warmup accs
If you really care about small fake follower %, you can use JV to block that type follower, just set filter User doesn’t have a profile image + user has less than or equal x post
i distinguish between sex and spam. sex= showing butts or boobs and actively advertising live cam stuff, spam= having no profile info at all and mass following OR being a guy from india or africa that clearly has no relation to the accounts content (different language, etc).
it is not that easy. there may be legitimate users with no posts and no profile image, etc. i know what is possible in the block users section of JV and there is no golden rule for detecting and excluding those sex/spam accounts. And as mentioned in my initial post: i went this path and blocked those accounts but it didn`t really help me or harm other accounts that did not block them.
With today IG, so many PPL use follow+engaged trusted accs to re-warmup their spam accs (sex bot, child accs etc) just to increase their spam accs trust score.
Dunno why you care so much about this. Still dont get it
because i THINK that those ghosts harm your engagement. IG pushes your content to 10% of your followers and tests waters on what engagement comes back. If there are too many spam accounts in this group that definitely dont engage with your content, IG will not give your posts more reach. If there is any guru in here who knows that this isnt true, please speak up. Otherwise this is the reason why i care about those spam accounts flooding your follower list. Legitimate right?
