Instagram has announced that it is conducting a thorough cleaning exercise of fake followers, likes, and comments generated by those apps boosting users popularity via dubious means.
According to a blog post, Instagram said they were cracking down accounts that used third party apps to artificially grow their audience. This move comes as Instagram's parent company Facebook has been striving to regain users trust in their service.
"Recently, we've seen accounts use third-party apps to artificially grow their audience," Instagram said in the blog post.
"Starting today, we will begin removing inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity."
Instagram is following Twitters steps, which made similar efforts in digging inauthentic accounts which resulted in the decline in the number of followers for some Twitter users.
The video and photo sharing social site is using self-improving software programs to help identify accounts that use such apps and purge products of inauthentic activity, which violates their terms of service.
Users of the social network will be notified about the removed likes, follows or comments.
\Instagram said that those who unknowingly linked their account to an offending app will only need to change their password to cut ties with the connection, However, those who still continue to use who third party appps will see their |experience impacted|, though the service didn't explain how the users service were to be affected.
Facebook has been under heavy fire following a New York Times publication that said the social media giant ignored warning about Russian influence campaign. Also, the social network hasn't been finding it funny as new York Times also said the social network C.E.O Mark Zuckerberg ordered itd executives stop using Apple smartphones after the Cupertino company criticized it.