Instagram Is Cracking Down On Services That Sell ‘Likes’ And Followers

You don’t need to make more friends to get more Instagram followers — all you need to do is swipe your credit card, and some services will boost your follower count for you. Instagram wants to cut down on that. Starting Monday, Instagram says it will no longer allow “inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity.” That includes buying “Likes” and followers, and paying for other engagement generated by apps that require a user’s Instagram login details in order to operate on their behalf. Instagram says it “built machine learning tools” to help detect accounts growing artificially. The move is not retroactive, so Instagram won’t be removing “Likes” or followers that accounts have already garnered. It’s just going to prevent them in the future. Read more at Recode.