People want Instagram followers so much, they don’t care if they’re bots — because when it comes to social media, appearances are reality. The businessmen who are happy to oblige those desperate for fake followers are rolling in the monies but at the same time, they’re locked in a weird arms race of algorithms — one where the bot farmers and social media platforms are constantly trying to outsmart the other.

The biggest battle right now is over Instagram, and one that here to stay.

The Clientèle

“Twitter racks $40–75 million a year, Facebook used to rack up to 100 million a year and Instagram racks more than both combined, in total, of all earnings from all sellers” said “Yuri,” a member of N2Farm based out in Russia, a “bot farm provider” group that sells fake followers to the retailers.

But really, more than being a wholesaler, N2Farm is a social media bot farm — like, the bot farm. Buy any “likes” or “followers” or “retweets” or even YouTube video views from any of the countless online vendors hawking these services, and overwhelmingly, you’ll end up using the bot accounts made by these guys. Especially if it’s on Instagram, the hottest market right now.

Access to the N2Farm is restrictred and by invite only. You cannot even find their website on the normal internet. Instead — if you are lucky enough then you may come across their site on the TOR network. But then again — you’ll end up running in circles as you will probably never find their site unless they invite you to it by a special link and credentials to log in to.

Verifying any of the information N2Farm provides is tricky (even determining the exact number of people I’ve talked to in N2Farm is almost impossible), and then there is N2Farm’s reputation as hoaxer to remember. The numbers they quoted me seem plausible, however: in 2013, the New York Times reported that a million Instagram followers was selling for $3,700. One study quoted in the Times said that, conservatively, “fake Twitter followers offered potential for a $40 million to $360 million business.” The the fake Facebook likes industry reportedly brought in $200 million in 2014.

The Spread

I reached out to Darius Kazemi, an artist who makes bots, to verify what N2Farm did share with me. For the most part, it seemed legit. For starters, it’s actually “very simple” to make a bot farm, explained Kazem, in part because Instagram gives out its API — essentially code, tools, and rules that make these platforms function — to developers.

Massive botnets, like the one N2Farm claims to have, are common and can generate millions of fake followers, he said.

“It does not stop there. Our bots and profiles have become so advanced after the previous purge that by this time we are not only providing followers but also automatic likes — meaning- your posts will get X amount of likes whenever you post on Instagram — its completely automated. You can subscribe for say 10,000 likes for 50 posts and you have nothing to worry about. Some of the celebrity accounts we work with have subscribed to over 50,000 likes per post for next 500 posts. Likes usually come within first 10–15 minutes of them making their post and its all automated.” said “Yuri” from N2Farm.

Services do not stop there. They claimed to have coded bots to send video views, post saves and this is where it gets even weirder — they claim to have the ability to send story views — live video views and likes — and to my surprise even Instagram impressions.

When asked about the quality of the followers N2Farm responded: “We have various categories of followers. We usually name them from 1 to 10. Category one being low quality of fake followers. These ones usually do not have a display photo or posts of their own. They look spammy but they are super cheap. Our resellers sell them for as low as $0.5 per 1000. At the top end we have category 10 — these are pretty expensive. These bots look so real that even we get confused on whether its a bot profile or a fake profile. Most of these bots have a display photos, a reasonable bio and name, a lot of posts of their own, followers and likes of their own. We sometimes call them ‘real’ followers given how authentic they look despite being fake.” said “Yuri”.

The Resellers

Upon approaching over 30 sites that sell to the end user such services and asking them about the credibility about N2Farm — most declined to give a response while a handful of them did admit that N2Farm is indeed the source farm for all the resellers.

Some of these sites ‘resellers’ seemed like they are reselling category 1 followers to the end users and trying to sell more at less price. Others — only a handful of them seemed to be selling category 10 (‘real’) followers to the end users with one of them labeling their followers and likes as Ultra Premium.

The Future

Removing bots and spam is a “major priority” for Instagram, communications representative Gabe Madway said in an email. Instagram has “dedicated teams across the company that focus on protecting people’s accounts and preventing abuse” on the platform, he said, who constantly “learn from scammers’ techniques.” Tools in their arsenal include “automated systems” that “use machine learning and other sophisticated techniques to help prevent and remove this content,” wrote Madway. So basically, bots looking for other bots. “We also rely on people to report spam when they see it,” he added. That is, if people can even tell who is a bot to begin with.

Regulating botting on platforms has always been difficult, noted Kazemi, because many people on social platforms are just “very bot-like” to begin with (in other words, they are predictable and often just share pictures of food, pets and sunsets). Others join the service just to follow friends and celebrities, but never post any content themselves. The “last thing you want is a false positive, you don’t want to shut them down,” said Kazemi. People were already angry over losing some of their followers when fake accounts were deleted back in December. They’d be even more mad if the accounts deleted were real.

Kazemi was once employed at a gaming company just to identify who was bot and who was a human. He has a very zen-like attitude about botting in general. (He makes bots as art and social experiments, after all.) “Any time you have a mathematical framework, people are going to try to abuse it,” he said, not necessarily in a malicious way, just to see what the limits are.

“Only by changing the fundamental rules of platform, like hiding how many followers a person has” would combatting botting on Instagram be possible, said Kazemi. “Bots warp and dilute the value of Instagram, and if the cost is high enough, you’d have to change the entire nature of the platform.” Would people want to be on a social media platform where people didn’t know how popular you were, though?

Hiding the amount of followers people have would put companies like N2Farm out of business, for sure. But maybe social media platforms too.