Are you happy with your social media presence or are you just wasting your time on an unhealthy addiction? This brief post publishes 1111 fake Instagram accounts and muses about how this affects the platform.

How does the platform encourage or discourage fake accounts and bots? I have noticed some accounts with a lot of fake followers. Here are some steps Instagram takes to encourage fake accounts:

When you request to see someone else’s followers on an account with a lot of fake followers they are not listed in chronological order, they are listed real accounts first then fake accounts. Why? To hide the fake accounts. This change was made in 2017, followers used to be listed in chronological order. Now in the app it is very difficult to scroll to see the fake followers. I’m publishing a list of 1111 very likely fake accounts below. Actually, I could publish 10k or 100k or 1 million fake accounts, they are easy to find because the platform makes it too easy for developers to script account creation. However, they do not make it equally easy for users to report fake accounts. So I can’t report these fake accounts to Instagram, many of them have existed for years. So Instagram is encouraging both fake accounts and the buying/selling of fake followers by 3rd parties. They could and should easily do more.

So this is the bot age of social media and the platforms are not doing enough to protect their users. There is some irony looking at the bot comments on obviously fake accounts. And where are they taking the photos from for these fake accounts? (Other Instagram accounts, dating websites, published Snapchat photos?). Will Instagram ban me for publishing fake accounts? I want them to improve the platform with basic changes their developers can easily make.

The problems with the social media platforms are a fascinating although at times sad reflection of human nature.

Here is the list, I find it interesting:

Table with 1111 fake Instagram accounts