Growth on Instagram largely depends on the interactions you receive from your audience. This includes likes, comments, shares on your posts, stories, ads, reels or any content you post on the platform.
Instagram measures these interactions to promote your posts into the feed of similar audiences, and hence helps you gain more followers and eventually leads and customers for your business.
But scoring massive interactions on your posts isn’t easy because the competition on the platform is tough and results take a while to reflect.
This’s where bots come to play. They automate processes like commenting, sharing, and liking to generate interactions for your account.
While some bots work, most of them harm your account by raising red flags with Instagram. Not only do they de-humanize your brand but also scare away potential customers.
The bad news is, even if you aren’t using bots, there’s a massive Instagram bots problem you must deal with. These bots can still create spam on your account.
Hence, it’s critical to understand, identify, and stop spam on Instagram. You can do this easily with auto- moderation.
In this article, we’ll discuss everything about Instagram spam bots and how to stop bots on Instagram with auto-moderation.
What are Instagram spam bots, and how do they operate?
Instagram spam bots are programmed tools which generate random texts and post them on Instagram. This involves irrelevant links, product advertisements, or texts containing malware targeted at users.
On Instagram, spam bots typically target the comments section of accounts to post out-of-context messages.
For instance, say you’ve posted a photo of your dog, a spam bot might comment with a message like “nice phone” or “umbrella” or worse… something offensive with swear words.
Their purpose is to generate interactions, but they can’t be controlled to understand the context of a post or sensitivity of other comments, which makes them a risk.
Instagram spamming bots take the aid of accounts on the platform to spread spam. In simple words, they create unique accounts and use them to comment on posts, ads, stories, and reels.
Every-so-often, Instagram spammer bots also take advantage of compromised credentials of accounts on the platform to generate spam. And if one account gets shut down, they simply create another.
Instagram spam bots affect your growth
On paper, bots appear as great tools to generate quick interactions on your content.
But they do more harm than good to your growth on the Instagram platform.
Whether you are running a business or an individual brand, your audience looks up to your content.
They appreciate when you post valuable content and interact with them regularly. This involves replying to their comments, answering their queries, or guiding them through a process they are struggling with.
One of the first steps to achieve this is to create a safe environment where they can comfortably share their opinions and take part in discussions about your brand.
Well, Instagram spam bots do the opposite.
They spam your comments section with random messages, creating a negative brand image.
Bots can scare away your customers
The way you interact with your customers, speaks volumes about your authenticity as a brand and shapes the relationship you have with them.
When someone comments on your post, they want to be heard, acknowledged and answered. If you ignore the efforts of your customers, they’ll have plenty of other brands to turn to. Bots make this tough for you by spamming your customers.
Say someone has asked about one of your products, instead of replying with a helpful answer, a bot replies something offensive or replies with an adult image.
This not only affects your brand image but also scares away other customers who might want to interact.
The worst part is Instagram spam bots continuously execute such actions until you get rid of them.
Bots can get you banned from the platform
Whether you are using bots to snowball your growth, Instagram consistently checks for bot action and punishes accounts by shadow-banning or banning them permanently.
Given the intense competition on the platform, getting banned might cost your business a massive loss in revenue, followers, and growth.
This also creates a negative image of your brand, forcing your customers to think you mightn’t be a legit business to trust.
Hence, it’s critical to block Instagram spam bots from interacting with your account and customers.
Bots are a threat to your and your customer’s account security
According to Imperva: 28.9% of total bots on Instagram want to steal your password or infect you with a virus.
Bots have become smart over the years.
The modern Instagram spam bots, not only create spam but also come programmed to steal and misuse your account’s information.
There are bots which can exploit your or your customer’s accounts to steal sensitive information and sell it to competitors, or simply abuse it to create more spam.
Hence, you must know how to stop spam bots on Instagram.
How to block Instagram spam bots using Instagram?
Blocking Instagram spam bots from creating spam on your posts can help you cultivate a safe environment for your customers to comfortably share opinions and trust your brand.
There are a few ways you can block bots from interacting with your account using Instagram’s built-in features.
Filter your comments
Instagram offers you the ability to filter out comments containing specific keywords.
This means you can predefine certain keywords to remove comments containing them.
Follow the steps below to achieve this:
1. Navigate to your profile on Instagram and tap on “Settings.”
2. Select “Privacy,” > “Hidden Words,” > “Advanced Comment Filtering.”
3. Now, select “Custom Words and Phrases” to create a list of custom words to hide
This way you can hide comments containing words like “Hot,” “Check DM,” “Promote Me,” etc.
Stop using largely used hashtags
Instagram spam bots often get triggered by largely used hashtags on the platform.
In simple words, bots are programmed to follow hashtags used by millions of people, aka popular hashtags.
When you use such a hashtag, bots get triggered to interact with your account. Hence, one way to block bots is to use niche hashtags around your brand.
You can make a quick search on Instagram to find out how many posts use a particular hashtag. Quick tip: avoid using hashtags with over 10 million in use.
Report the bots from your account
Instagram lets you report accounts which bother you on the platform. When you report an account, Instagram investigates it, and if the team finds the account guilty, they punish it.
Follow the steps below to achieve this:
- Tap on the username of the bot account you wish to report
- Tap on the three dotted icon and select “Report”
- Pick the type of account you wish to block and simply follow the instructions which appear on the screen
The only issue with this method is you need to identify the bot accounts, which can get tricky because bots have started to sound human. Hence, you must take the time to make sure the account you are reporting is genuinely a bot account.
How to block Instagram spam bots using auto-moderation?
You can also block Instagram spam bots using auto-moderation.
But there’s an obvious question, if you can use Instagram’s built-in features to achieve the same, why invest in a third-party auto-moderation service?
Well, Instagram’s built-in tools for blocking bots have a few limitations:
- Instagram doesn’t specifically design tools for users to block bots, which means as the technology thrives and powerful bots hit the market, most of them will easily bypass the blocking tools.
- Instagram’s blocking tools might end up blocking genuine users, mistaking them for bots. This can cause the loss of legitimate followers.
- You must use what Instagram lets you. In simple words, Instagram’s blocking tools have limited options for customization and control, making it difficult for you to fine-tune the blocking process to your specific needs.
Hence, to block Instagram spam bots, you must invest in a third-party service which provides you the freedom to set moderation rules and customize the blocking process around your needs.
Block Instagram spam bots with CommentGuard
CommentGuard is the go-to tool for organizing, and moderating, your comments section. It provides many industry-leading tools to help you block Instagram spam bots seamlessly.
The best part of CommentGuard is it recognizes the different comments and has tailored features for each scenario.
Let us briefly discuss some features of CommentGuard which you can use to block Instagram spam bots:
Keeps your comments section clean from spam
With CommentGuard, you don’t have to worry about manually going through every comment on your Instagram posts, ads, stories, and reels.
The tool immediately processes new comments within seconds of being posted.
You can set rules to auto-detect comments containing specific keywords and profanity in 12 unique languages and delete them right away.
But that’s not all, you also get a “Private Mode,” enabling which will hide new comments until you’ve reviewed them.
This feature even works for comments that contain spammy images, GIFs, links, and emojis.
Helps you identify bot action quickly
CommentGuard has an incredible list feature which displays a comprehensive list of comments from all your posts, ads, stories, reels, and pages.
This way, you can quickly analyze, like, delete, hide, ban, reply, or even send private messages to commenters.
To put icing on the cake, you can save specific replies and have them automatically triggered by certain keywords or filters.
Helps you fight the bots with your team
With CommentGuard, you can invite team members and give them access to manage comments, even if they don’t have access to your Instagram account.
You can also assign specific pages to each team member, ensuring everyone is working on the content that aligns with their expertise.
Conclusion
Now you know everything about Instagram spam bots and how you can stop them with auto-moderation.
Instagram bots are programmed tools which can harm your account and affect your brand growth on the platform. Hence, you must block them immediately. But the bots are getting more intelligent, making it tough to identify and block them. While Instagram offers some great tools to battle bot action, you are limited to a few actions.
This is where you can use a tool like CommentGuard, which offers tailored features to block Instagram spam bots and keep your comments section organized and free of spam.