Instagram tired of people illegally boosting their likes and followers, starts cleansing profiles

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks right now, so much so that there are people making a living off their Instagram profiles similar to YouTubers. As with its counterparts, success on the photo-sharing app comes with large numbers of followers and likes. Not all of those come from real people, however, and Instagram has had enough with users’ shenanigans and is putting an end to it, a recent blog post informs us.

As the rules of every market dictate, where there’s a demand for a service or a product, someone is there to supply it. When it comes to Instagram, the demand for high follower numbers, sometimes even required by modeling agencies to be considered for a job, created a niche for third-party apps and accounts made for the sole purpose of providing likes and follows to whoever pays for them.

Now, Instagram is putting to use newly developed machine learning tools that will detect and remove likes, follows and comments that are coming from illegitimate sources, according to the company’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Use. Since user count is important for Instagram, it’s not banning the offenders, instead: