The Instagram tag section of celebrities is chaos

On Instagram, many users complain about the increase in spam, a term now used to refer to a wide range of unsolicited and unreliable content. Initially, this was a phenomenon traditionally limited to email, but now it also affects major platforms—with forms and methods that do not always make it immediately clear that it is spam. On Instagram, users typically receive message requests from suspicious accounts, comments under their posts, and even tags in photos or videos promoting potentially harmful content. The extent of the phenomenon can be seen just by looking at the tag section of celebrities, where sexual content is prevalent. This phenomenon not only ruins the browsing experience but also poses a security risk for users—especially the more naive ones. Most of this content is produced and distributed by bots, programmed to generate and share posts, messages, and advertisements autonomously. The presence of bots on platforms is not a novelty or necessarily a bad thing, as not all are designed to harm users. Every year, the American cybersecurity company Imperva publishes the “Bad Bot Report,” which tracks the presence of this phenomenon on the web. According to the latest edition, about 50% of Internet activity is generated by bots—up from 42% in 2021. And roughly one-third of these are identified as malicious bots, developed with the intent to deceive users. On Instagram, the recent increase in bot-generated spam says a lot about the current state of the platform, which is undergoing significant changes in its algorithms, increasingly focusing on Reels. However, spam is a common problem across almost all social networks: the way it is managed and the ability to contain it in some ways reflect the health of individual platforms, which differ greatly in this regard—and Instagram, as it happens, is not doing well.

How bots operate on Instagram

Among the most common spam campaigns on Instagram, besides erotic content, are those related to supposed discounts on Shein or the sale of iPhones, among other things. The most widespread and visible method by which bots generate spam is by posting photos or videos, tagging many users—including the most known and followed accounts, often belonging to celebrities and brands. In individual posts, bots try to attract attention with comments or likes. However, the tactic that scares users the most is the bots’ “likes” on Stories. On TikTok, a sort of conspiracy theory has even spread, suggesting that the responsible parties are actually users viewing Stories from the web, using bots as a cover to remain anonymous. The online publication BuzzFeed News also tried to verify this hypothesis but found no evidence of its validity. The decision to train bots to like Stories might seem suspicious because it mimics human behavior, but it actually represents a rather common method for bots to legitimize themselves in the eyes of Instagram’s algorithm. These campaigns are carried out by a multitude of profiles with very similar characteristics: a relatively credible person’s name, generally female, followed by a series of digits, often accompanied by the photograph of a young girl. Opening the account usually reveals it is inactive and has just been created. In most cases, the profile’s bio contains a sexually explicit message—hence these bots are often called “sexbots”—and a link to an external site. These sites are likely attempts at phishing, a type of scam where users are tricked into providing personal information—such as financial data or secret access codes—to deceive them.

How to avoid spam on Instagram

Currently, the only tools available to users are reporting and blocking such accounts, an activity that can be frustrating—especially for profiles with many followers—given the number of new bots constantly being created. Yet, it remains the only method to allow Meta to delete a significant number of them. To date, however, there is no solution to completely solve the problem, especially for the most followed accounts: making one's profile private would be a major limitation for many public figures and would only prevent the problem of bot likes on Stories, but not that of tags—since Instagram allows anyone to be tagged, even those without public profiles. Meta is aware of the presence of spam on the platform and has repeatedly assured in the past that the issue is constantly monitored by a dedicated team, which already removes a large number of bots—several million per day. However, it should be noted that Meta, since the end of 2022, has made major staff cuts, reducing its workforce by over 25%: among the most affected sections is content moderation, which handles spam reports—a service Meta had already outsourced to various parts of the world, often contracting external companies, with all the consequences this entails. Observers believe that the lack of adequate resources and personnel has likely contributed to the spread of bots, particularly on Instagram, increasing a problem that many users now perceive and notice.