Botcalypse Now!
Major IG Services & Scripts such as InstaPy Disrupted Overnight by new AI bot detection algo.
Things are getting really bad for anyone that relies on automation services to control their IG accounts. Last Wednesday Instagram started banning accounts using the popular script InstaPy without notification. It was “best practice” to create a bunch of fake bot accounts and link your main account in the fake profiles. This would allow you to spread your risk across multiple accounts and stay under the radar. Scripts like these were actively used for boosting a profiles followers, boosting likes, or (best of all) driving traffic to a website. There was a white-paper released by Facebook in 2018 that covers some of the research around these account automation services also known as AAS.
The InstaPy Issue 4490 is a storm of people (which half probably barely know how to code) that have stopped running the bot. Seems like there is some discussion around using AI to combat this new IG Auto Banning Algo.
https://github.com/timgrossmann/InstaPy/issues/4490
These AI algos probably have detected how these services have interacted with its services and started issuing temp bans on accounts. In an obvious game of cat and mouse between Instagram & Bots; it’s hard to say the bots have lost.
I’m going to attempt to write my own scripts to see how it works out. My assumption here is that a handwritten script that uses a real device or browser with the right timing settings could beat this algo for a bit. However, if released to the general public, these algos catch on to these scripts activity styles and bans those accounts.
Stay tuned here or follow me on ig/twitter @OGProgrammer