Why Celebrities Instagram Accounts Are Always Full of Spam

Instagram has more than one billion active users a month. It was meant to be an environment for entertainment, communication, and inspiration.

Perhaps the last thing people expect to see on Instagram is spam, asking to sign up for random offers, watch a video, or donate money.

I do not want to see it on Instagram either, but spam seems to dominate high-profile pages. Whenever Demi Lovato, as an example, posts on Instagram, trash comments pop up immediately. Due to hundreds of likes, they stay on top, and all 103 million of Demi’s followers see them.

All these spam comments have one thing in common: They are created to get your attention and make you perform a particular action online.

Spam is unpleasant for users, and it brings zero value to the platform, but someone intentionally does it all the time. As a marketer, I will share a few thoughts about how this spam is generated and how others benefit from this shady business.

Who creates spam on Instagram?

Bots are usually used to automate spam posts and publish them on popular Instagram accounts.

Bot accounts often look real. To avoid being flagged as spam, bots can mimic human behavior by posting images to their accounts, liking posts, and making connections with other users.

About 150 million accounts on Instagram are fake, according to Digital Information World. It’s becoming serious security and data protection issue for Instagram!

Bot accounts usually have thousands of followers, while the number of posts is minimal. It indicates the account is most likely not real unless it belongs to a celebrity.

Accounts with many followers and a few posts belong to bot networks that follow each other’s profiles to fool users and make them believe accounts are real.

Here is a bot account that often spams Demi Lovato’s posts:

Luckily, it is easy to detect a bot account on Instagram. They all have similar characteristics, such as:

• Spam comments with a massive number of likes
• Thousands of followers with a few posts
• The account is private, so you can't see the content
• Profile bio contains suspicious CTAs (call to action) to sign up, like, share, watch a video, etc.

People operating bots want your attention, and they know celebrities' accounts are quite popular. Hence it is a perfect opportunity to hook you even if you are not currently browsing Instagram. After all, awareness is already halfway to a successful deal or a purchase.

Bots promote accounts and services that users would not find and follow otherwise.

Here are the most frequently used spam requests you might find on celebrity profiles. I share them intentionally. You have to be aware of scams and stay away from shady businesses.

1. Giveaways for nothing

Strangers ask you to follow their account and get (a lot of) money for free. If you see such offers keep scrolling the feed. There is nothing free on Earth, and the giveaway is most likely fake unless it’s an official promotion.

2. “Follow me, and I’ll follow you” requests

People eagerly follow strangers’ accounts to grow their own follower base. But what do you get in this case? A passive follower (can be a bot), spammy stories, and irrelevant posts in your feed.

3. Watch, share, follow adult content

Unfortunately, Instagram is still not good at flagging adult content and trash comments that promote it. Be careful when you follow such profiles since they tend to redirect users to external websites and ask for contact information. Be responsible for what you share online.

4. Donate for good

Donation requests try to play on your emotions by sharing life-drama stories in comments. You might see identical messages from different accounts asking you to donate money for cancer treatment or help lonely moms. People are sensitive and emotional behavior cannot always be explained. Make sure you do not fall into a trap when reading such comments.

A single reason behind massive Instagram spam

We live in an era of fake information when it is hard to recognize the truth and believe it.

Facebook says reducing inauthentic activity on Instagram is a priority. However, no significant progress has been made to flag spam unless you manually report it.

Why does someone focus on spam but not on value for a community? Why does someone design bots that leave trash all over the internet?

Let me explain this

You are an individual with specific likes, tastes, and behavior. You browse online when you look for something. You are one among billions of users on the web, yet you are unique and special.

Your attention is scattered due to informational noise. Your attention is a reason why a massive amount of spam content is produced.

Someone behind the scenes wants to catch you and make you buy something, register somewhere, read, like, follow, or share.

The more content is produced online, the higher the competition to reach you, catch your attention, and make you do a certain action.

Since it is getting more challenging to reach people online, more grey strategies are being designed to bypass the competition and reach users.

Spam content is just one strategy to reach millions of people online and promote services that are impossible to advertise.

Celebrities' accounts are used as an environment to seed information. People will not stop following their beloved idols, neither will shameless advertisers and bots stop spamming their accounts.

It is pure business. Low input is needed to design bots and spread spam, but the output is a huge audience’s attention.

Even if a single user does what spammers request, they win.

Staying conscious about your actions online is the best strategy to protect your data and browse the internet safely.

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