#we reached an epiphany of sorts and could finally fill out those last two pages that had been sitting blank since last year
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let it be known that I completed my journal today, like I wrote on the last available page for it
holy shit
#dania rambles about shit#its a green leather one that I bought for summer vacation 2013#it lasted me ten fucking years#what the fuck a whole decade#we forgot to take it with us when we went on vacation in august before 8th grade started#like I wrote in it each time something important enough happened that I'd remembered its existence#we'd had to find it through all the piles of papers and notebooks and sketchbooks on our desk#or when we got the book shelves and couldn't keep it in the same spot for us to find omfg#like this journal was there when I met the most important people of my life#wrote in it when I graduated and went to college#wrote in it sometimes when I had to just write out my thoughts that were keeping me up at night#the process of my handwriting getting to what it is today like similarities can be seen to the chicken scrall I had ten years ago#yet its so damn different to the chicken scrall we have today lmao#the first entry was a sketch of the beach in cali#it was done when I got back from vacationing and realised I forgot it which defeated the purpose of why I got it in the first place#as in to write all the things I did on those days spent away from home#so it became tradition to just forget the journal and a joke to try and finish it at all#the last entry I made today because I finally stopped procrastinating and make the important phone calls#we reached an epiphany of sorts and could finally fill out those last two pages that had been sitting blank since last year#literally closing a chapter of my life#a whole book on it really#idk about getting a new one#like what if it takes another ten years to finish?#also the sketchbooks have served for the same purpose recently when writing letters I can't bring myself to send#plus sketches to go along with whatever brain rot we have going on#hmmmm decisions decisions
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Come Find Me
Come Find Me
by rons-hermiones
Summary: Unplanned, Hermione is forced to spend Christmas at the Burrow due to her grandmother falling very ill. After being ignored by Hermione for weeks, Ron is determined to show her how much she means to him. Just before he gets the chance to tell her, Bellatrix Lestrange shows up with other plans for Hermione. Can Ron get to her before it's too late? (Ron/Hermione Half-Blood Prince AU)
Rating: M for language & dark themes in later chapters.
Chapter Six
“Oh Bill, wonderful to have you, you as well dear!” Molly exclaimed embracing Fleur.
Nearby, Ginny scowled to herself.
“Bill we’re surprised you came so early.” Fred commented.
“What?” The eldest Weasley asked, confused.
“Well, we thought you only came out when the moon did!” George laughed.
“Boys!” Missus Weasley scolded, making a move to lunge at her two sons. However, a loud crack sounded, indicating they had left for work.
“Those two, I swear.” Molly rolled her eyes.
“It’s okay, you got a better welcome from them then I did!” Charlie’s voice sounded from the steps.
Bill’s face brightened instantly as he unashamedly went to embrace his younger brother. They’d written each other any chance they got. They remained close, but it wasn’t the same as being with one another.
“Charlie, I’ve missed you!”
“Not as much as I missed you big brother.” He breathed pulling away, “I haven’t seen you in what a year? And you up and get yourself engaged. It’s like you're a new man.” He teases. Charlie knew about the engagement from their correspondences, but had yet to see the ring on Fleur’s finger in person.
“And you are one brave woman, agreeing to marry a Weasley.” He said turning to the blonde.
“Oui!” She teased back, making the room erupt with laughs, even eliciting a chuckle from Ginny.
“Gin, why don’t you show Fleur around while I talk to Harry?” He asked hopefully. It was his goal to get his fiancé closer with his little sister before the wedding.
With a small grunt, Ginny obliged as she ushered Fleur outside.
“Not that I’m not happy to see you Bill, but what is it you wanted to speak with me about? Things okay with the order?” Harry asked in a whisper once the girls had vanished.
Quickly, he nodded, “everything’s as good as it can be these days, I just was wondering how Ron’s been. He’s written me quite a bit.”
“Oh,” Harry said relieved, “well, he was in a funk for a while there, I reckon he still is, but now he’s realized he’s in a funk, which sort of makes things better, you know?” He tries, never been the best with feelings.
Bill chuckled, “alright I think I know what you mean. He wrote me yesterday, something about he had sort of broken up with Lavender, but made things worse with her.” He didn’t wanna say Hermione’s name in fear she was around somewhere.
“Okay let me fill you in some. It all started two days ago in our dorms...”
After twenty minutes Harry had thoroughly filled in the details Ron left out in his letter. He had also recalled some of the conversation Ron had told Harry he and Ginny had, something the youngest Weasley brother failed to mention to Charlie.
When the chosen one finished, Bill let out a low whistle. He had known Ron’s situation was messed up from the letters, but damn, his little brother, the heartbreaker. Who would’ve thought?
“Speaking of, where is Hermione? I haven’t seen her since we arrived.” Bill asked next.
The dark haired boy nodded solemnly, “I’m afraid she won’t leave Ginny’s room unless your Mum makes her. She’s pretty bummed out about her Gran, but she also agreed to ‘stay out of Ron’s way,’ whatever that means.” Harry finished with air quotes.
At this, Charlie clicked his tongue, “Ron is hopeless. This isn’t exactly potions with Snape! It’s an easy fix.” He tutted.
“Where is Ron? Surely he’d want to greet his favorite brother.” Bill says next.
“Hey!” Charlie retorts, making Harry laugh.
The oldest rolls his eyes, “all in good fun, but seriously.”
“He’s been working on something all night. I could hear him.” Harry commented.
Charlie nodded, “he had some sort of epiphany last night. He’s doing something for Hermione, all I know is that it involves Hogwarts, A History. He’s mental.”
“Ron wouldn’t pick up that book for anything!” Harry soon points out.
“Well maybe not for anything, but for someone...” Charlie trails off.
Suddenly, Ginny bursts through the door, alone.
“Where’s Fleur?” Bill questioned.
“She’s discussing something about the wedding with Mum, I had to get away,” she shakes her head, “anyone fancy a game of quidditch?”
At this both Charlie and Harry jump at the chance.
“Coming Bill?” Ginny asks as the other two boys disappear to gather their brooms.
He shakes his head, “no, I think I’ll go say hi to Ronnie. Maybe when you're done you should check up on Hermione, yeah?”
At this, his younger sister nods as he treks up to the attic.
Once reaching the door decorated with Chudley Cannon posters and gold and red emblems, he knocks.
“I’m awake Mum!” Ron promises through the door.
“Not Mum.” Bill says opening the door.
“Bill!” He exclaims excitedly, dropping the book to the ground and clambering off the bed, “how are you? How do you feel, wow, the scars have healed some. You look wicked! Like some bloke from those stories Mum reads.”
At this, he laughs, “I feel great actually. Sometimes the full moon drives me a bit mad, but it’s not like I turn or anything like that. Plus, Fleur has done wonders taking care of me, making sure I take my potions and all that.” He assures, circling to sit on the edge of Ron’s bed.
“Yeah I wouldn’t mind if she took care of me either.” He joked.
At this Bill jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow.
“Hey, kidding!” Ron laughed, “plus, I’m rather done with blondes. Forever.” He shivers remembering Lavender Brown.
“Ah,” his brother breathes, “your love life has become quite the topic from what I hear.”
At this Ron groans, “well I’m not to sure how many times ‘Ron is fucking moron,’ can be told but, glad your up to date.”
Knowing Ron’s probably had his fair share of feeling bad, Bill holds off on making him re live anything, for now, “well, rumor is you’re working on something to fix your troubles.”
The youngest Weasley boy blushes madly, “it’s a bit stupid really.”
“Come on just tell me.” Bill encourages.
Ron breathes in defeat, wanting to tell someone, “alright well, Charlie said a gift might do then suddenly, I was reminded of this conversation from back in fifth year...”
Ron sauntered into the common room with a moody Harry by his side. This behavior from the chosen one had become typical since the start of term, he was always so worked up over You-Know-Who and the ministry these days.
And Ron could feel for him, he really did, he just wished Harry would drop the act around him and Hermione, who believed him completely.
“Hermione.” Harry greeted too gruffly for Ron’s liking.
In response, the bushy haired witch just hummed in acknowledgement. Hermione had been engrossed in her favorite book, so Ron knew better then to bother her and simply sat to her right.
It was odd, but he rather liked to see her like this. It was almost adorable to see how invested she could get into something like a book. He admired her for it.
Harry had fallen to her left and rolled his eyes, “are you good for anything but reading Hermione?” He asked viciously.
At this, Hermione’s eyes finally left the pages of Hogwarts, A History and stared at her best friend in shock. Ron had passed shocked and moved entirely to anger. Harry looked as if he regretted what he said right after it left his mouth.
“You say you’re sorry right now!” Ron roared, jumping to his feet.
“Ron, it’s alright,” she began meekly from the velvet sofa.
“Like hell it isn’t Hermione. Just cause stupid blokes like Seamus call you a liar doesn’t mean you get to start on her!” He pointed out.
The dark haired boy sighed sadly, “I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, really Hermione”,
“It’s alright Harry.” She amended stiffly, “I think I’ll go for a walk.” The brunette quickly scrambled, grabbing her book before scampering out of the portrait hole.
As soon as she was out of sight, Harry turned apologetically to Ron, “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You shouldn’t have.” The ginger replied softly, “and I know everything that happened with Cedric was really hard, but it’s hard for Hermione too. She thinks she could’ve done more,”
“She couldn’t have.” Harry tells him sadly.
He nods, “I know, but she doesn’t, so when you sound off telling her stuff like that, it just makes her feel bad.”
The Boy-Who-Lived sighed, “I really didn’t mean it. You were right, I was just so done with people like Umbridge and Seamus calling me liars, sometimes I forget not everyone feels that way.” He admitted.
At this, Ron stood as he clapped him on the shoulder, “it’s already done mate, just try to remember that from now on, alright?” He didn’t sound angry anymore, much to Harry’s relief.
Harry nodded as he watched Ron venture out of the common room, no doubt to find Hermione.
“Hey Ron, wait.” He called out, standing and walking to him.
“Yeah?” He asked.
“I know I was upset about you two spending summer at Grimmauld Place together,” Ron opened his mouth to argue, but Harry stopped him, “and I know why you had to do it, I just wanted you to know, I’m happy you had each other. Well, I just, I reckon you two need each other as much as I need the pair of you, does that make sense?” He rambled.
“I think so Harry, you sound a little mental though.” He joked.
“It’s just, I know how you feel about her.” He blurted out.
“Come again?” Ron had gone pale.
Harry’s voice dropped to a whisper, “well I’ve always had some suspicions Ron. We do share a room you know, you mumble her name like every other night.” At this Weasley turned a deep shade of red that rivaled his hair.
Soon after, the green eyed boy pointed to his face, “see that! You blushed like mad whenever she came around first year, just like you are now. I know you were taking my invisibility cloak to go down to the infirmary second year. I heard you tell Neville back in third about how much you enjoyed Hogsmede and you were painfully obvious when she agreed to go to the ball with Viktor Krum, I reckon that’s when I really knew.”
For a few moments Ron opened and closed his mouth like a fish, but in the end, he shockingly, didn’t deny it, “why didn’t you say anything?”
Harry shrugged and thought about it, “well, I suppose I was waiting for you to figure it out as well. It seems to me you have.” He smiles slightly.
Ron nods, “yeah, for a while there I just thought blokes felt like that around their mates who were girls. Probably around third year I realized it was a little different with her then it was with you. Definitely sorted it all out during that ruddy Ball.” He paused, “you’re not, well, you’re not angry?” One of the reasons Ron decided not to confide in Harry was because he didn’t want him to think there was any sort of divide.
“Of course not. If anything I’m relieved I can stop pretending not to notice.” He laughed.
At this, Ron let out an embarrassed chuckle, “well just don’t tell her alright?”
Harry nodded, “will you ever? Tell her I mean.” He asks.
At this the redhead shrugs, “I dunno, I just, it’s hard. I’d rather live my whole life watching her with other blokes then lose her as a friend.”
Potter lets out a whistle, “I can see The Prophet headlines now, ‘Weasley has Feelings!’” He laughs.
They lapse into a brief silence, “you go after her.”
Ron doesn’t need to be told twice and simply nods to his friend.
“If it means anything, I think she feels the same Ron.” Harry says rather vaguely before going to a dark corner of the common room.
For a moment, he considers staying and asking more about this theory, but instead decides to check on Hermione. Harry could wait.
After wandering the dark corridors for a few minutes, he soon feels the urge to slap himself for not thinking sooner. He hadn’t checked the library.
Set out on a new mission, he stalks his way to his new destination. However, halfway to the library he suddenly remembers that it’s probably closing soon, if not already. Inwardly groaning on not setting after her soon, he quickened his pace.
And just as he’s about to reach the proper corridor something catches his eye. In between one of the many narrow hallways leading to nothing but a window, is someone sitting against it, book in hand.
And not just anyone, Hermione.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he slowly makes his way to her, “Mione.” He begins as to not startle her, she hasn’t seemed to notice his presence.
Her brown eyes look up from her book, in the moonlight he can see them slightly glossed over as red rings appear around them.
“Oh hi.” Her voice is croaked and throaty, it makes his heart break.
“I’ve been looking all over for you.” He says softly, sliding down next to her.
“Oh I’m sorry Ron.” She apologizes sincerely, “it’s silly though isn’t it, I’ve run off to read again. Maybe Harry was right.” Her voice cracks.
“It’s not true, you know it isn’t.” Ron fiercely assured.
“If he didn’t mean it why did he say it?” The brunette asked.
He sighs sadly, “Hermione you know what he’s been like lately. As soon as you left he told me how sorry he was.”
“But it’s true isn’t it?” She asks after a beat, leaving no room for him to even protest, “all I do is sit here and read while Harry and you are off actually doing something.”
“Hermione what?” He asks genuinely confused.
“Think Ron, who got rid of that troll first year?”
“Well you were only in the bathroom because of me and you were the one who got me through the spell-”
“Alright and who won the chess game the same year? Who got the philosopher's stone?”
“Hermione we would’ve never even found the-”
She cuts him off again, “and who was lying useless petrified while you were in the chamber of secrets?”
He groans, “again if you hadn’t had the note then Harry and I-”
She leaves no room for him to speak, “and third year you were the one who even spotted Sirius.”
“I was also the one with a broken leg when the two of you-”
“Fourth year as well, you knew about the dragons.”
“Only because Charlie told me, are you done?” He asks.
“Or even this summer. You were the one who knew about the Order, even knew to handle Harry.” She’s now close to tears.
Ron let’s a moment pass before speaking, “are you finally finished?” He whispered hoarsely.
Next to him, she nodded, but didn’t dare meet her eyes with his.
“You’re mental Hermione. Mental. Don’t you know we’d be dead without you? You’re the one who figured out the Nicholas Flamel business. You realized how the Basilisk had been getting around. And who had the time turner that saved Sirius, Lupin, and Buckbeak third year?” He reminded, “not to mention that without you, Harry would’ve never gotten through any of those tasks. Not to mention, him and I wouldn’t even be friends if you hadn’t convinced me to talk to him. And this summer? You’re the one who kept me sane when I was ready to hex everyone there.”
He took a second to catch his breath after the long rant, “sure you read a lot of books, but that’s not why you’re brilliant. You’re brilliant because you know exactly what to say to help your friends. You know exactly how to save the rest of us.” At this, she completely broke down.
Hermione’s head soon found a place atop Ron’s shoulder as she burrowed into it and cried silently. If this had happened a few years back, Ron would probably stiffly pat her head, but now, he knew better.
Instead, he gently laid an arm across her shoulder and pushed her into him with a squeeze. His other hand made its way through her soft hair, letting his finger gently massage her scalp.
“Thank you Ron,” she managed soon after, “I’ve just been feeling so useless, hearing Harry,”
“Sh, Hermione,” he assured soundly, “I know how it feels too, but being here, even making you feel the tiniest bit better, well, it makes me feel not so useless.” He admitted, thankful she couldn’t see his now red cheeks.
At this, Ron felt the witch nod into him, “you do make me feel better Ron. And you’re not useless, if I hadn’t made it clear, I think you’re rather brilliant.”
A small smile grazed his lips as he continued to stroke the expanse of her hair. Her cries had now slowed, but he still felt she was tense.
“You know Mione,” he began, making her hum softly, an indication to continue, “I understand you wanna read all the time, but this old book, again? You’ve been picking it up since first year.” He teased.
Thankfully, a small chuckle bubbles past her lips, making him feel warm.
“It’s rather pleasurable Ron, I’d love it if you read it. You have such an interesting point of view having grown up with this stuff, and well just being you, I’m sure your notes on it would be fascinating.”
“Sorry to disappoint you Mione, as much as I love y,” he pauses, “as much as I love reading,” he amends sarcastically, “I’d need a bloody good reason to pick this thing up. And I mean important, life or death maybe.” He tells her.
Again, a small laugh escapes from where she's nuzzled into his side.
“One day Ron. One day.”
They stayed like that until she fell asleep.
“I thought maybe if I read this damn thing and made notes on what I thought and gave it to her, then it would show her how much she means to me.” He explained after briefly prefacing the significance behind it.
To this, Bill smiled brightly, “I think it’s a wonderful idea Ron. Very thoughtful and personal to the pair of you, plus she’ll go nuts when she’s learned you picked up a book!” He teased, “what section are you on?”
“I’ve gotten past the four founders. Right now I’m in the middle of all the troll business. I mean, sure it sort of feels like a textbook, but part of it reminds me of her, then it’s not so bad, is that mental?” He asks a little flustered.
His older brother shakes his head, “no Ronnie, not mental. It’s almost romantic.” He jokes lightly.
At this Ron rolls his eyes, but blushes nonetheless, “thanks.”
A deep laugh escapes Bill as he stands from the bed, “I’ll be on my way now. You have a lot of reading to do in just three days little brother.”
“Oi! And don’t I know it.” Ron yells as he leaves the room.
#rons-hermiones come find me#ron and hermione#ron weasley#ron x hermione#hermione granger#sixth year#romione fanfic#romione#hp#hp fanfic
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The Villain’s Path to the Power of Love
So, look, this is what happened.
I couldn’t tell you how many lives were lost when we fought the Alliance that day. I don’t remember how many times we narrowly dodged a civilian casualty, how many buildings we toppled, how many heroes and villains were lost. When it all came to a head, only seven stood on each side.
I remember scanning over the rows of heroes, ready to pounce at whichever so much flinched. But then King Chrome stepped out of line.
That flashy suit he was so proud of was dented, scratched and burned to shit, he hid his limp as best as he could, and his eyes didn’t waver from the line of heroes in front of him.
I looked across the battlefield to my nemesis, One, the Last of the Atlanteans. He once claimed that when they broke the laws of nature, had their country drowned in the depths of the Atlantic, and had their history wiped from the collective conscience of all humanity, that their spirits remained and amassed into a great power.
One had that power. His memories, his strength, his moral code, all of it was from the collective will of a dead continent.
I had been proud to call him my rival for the past five years.
But, as his eyes were fixed on whatever King Chrome’s next move was, I held my breath and pulled my eyes over to the boss, waiting to see what he was planning, hoping he wouldn’t lay a hand on my nemesis.
Then, King Chrome removed his helmet.
He gave his name and age, where he worked, and what he fought for.
Everyone was stunned into silence. After all, King Chrome, the Silver Devil, the genius philanthropist behind the Pitch Brotherhood, was a twice over college dropout who worked as an intern in the Mayor’s office.
He said that he had friends and family and a wife at home worrying about him. He pointed out all the destruction around us and proposed a ceasefire. Everyone was tired, everyone needed to make sure their loved ones were okay. He argued back and forth with the heroes for an hour, debating why they shouldn’t just arrest him on the spot, declaring that they were still strong enough to take him, claiming that the destruction around us was our fault and not theirs.
Then Evernight stepped up from the hero’s side. And he revealed his identity.
The tightening in my chest stopped. There was finally some leverage on both sides. We could all actually walk away from this peacefully.
And then fucking Hoplite stepped forward and revealed his identity, which drove me crazy for two reasons.
First, we could always see his stupid fucking face through his stupid fucking helmet, so the reveal added nothing to anything going on, except maybe to suck off his own ego.
Second, it encouraged another hero to step up and reveal their identity.
At the end of the day, seven heroes, seven villains, all fourteen of us, knew exactly who the others were. Everyone had leverage.
Each side, holding power over their specific side of the law, was sworn to secrecy.
And everyone went home.
A month had passed and there weren’t any big-name heroes or villains running around. Some folks thought the heroes stopped their patrols because there weren’t villains to capture. Others thought the villains were committing crimes because there were no heroes to challenge. Sometimes a shitty C-list villain would try and rob a museum dressed as a giant chocolate bar or something, and then a shitty C-list hero dressed as a toothbrush wielding a dental floss lasso would stop him.
Otherwise, it all went back to cops and robbers.
Me and a few members of the Pitch Brotherhood met up a few times over the next few weeks. We couldn’t believe what had happened that day. And you know how things get. You’re drinking, you see a crime on the TV in the bar and talk about how you would’ve done it without getting caught, and then you have an epiphany.
See, the heroes were always open and honest about what it was they loved, believed in, and fought for. And those same things were always recited by the press when they’d get in the news. Somehow, we came to the conclusion that maybe we’d get a better reputation if we found somethings to love and care about.
And that’s how I ended up spending the next three days of my life glued to dating apps.
I downloaded Blaze. I loved all the sex, but didn’t feel like any of the girls were dating material. Especially the one that stole my wallet.
I downloaded Cross-Shaped Heart, but religious girls weren’t really my thing. And they didn’t put out like girls on Blaze. I went back to Blaze for a bit.
I downloaded Wedding Bells. The girls on there were even more intense than the ones on Cross-Shaped Heart. So, naturally, I went back to Blaze.
I downloaded The Cave at Hoplite’s suggestion. I learned two things from that experience. One, I learned what a bear was. Two, I learned that Hoplite thought I was gay.
Things finally settled down when I downloaded Venus. The girls seemed like actually people, interested in a decent commitment without being super clingy, and may or may not be down to fuck; if yes, great, if no, maybe on date two. And after heading back to Blaze for a bit.
I talked with Sophie for two months before she agreed to go on a date with me.
Meeting her outside of La Nourriture for dinner, I had to admit I lucked into a better girl than I expected. She was one of the prettier girls I’d met through online dating, she was friendly and funny, wasn’t afraid to disagree with me, and could actually keep a conversation going. She also had a habit of asking you to explain things in a way that made it seem like she really cared about what you had to say.
I’m not so macho that I can’t admit that when she greeted me with a kiss on the cheek my heart melted a little.
We’d just walked in and just sat down. Hadn’t even met our waiter yet, when some random broad approaches and screams Sophie’s name and comes running over to our table. I’m about to get pissed when Sophie got up and hugged her, apparently it was her cousin Dalia.
If Sophie was a nine than Dalia was a thousand. Long hair, thick lips, huge tits, and a cool tattoo on her shoulder.
A familiar tattoo.
A familiar tattoo of five woman intertwined going from her elbow to her shoulder.
That’s when it hit me. I knew who Dalia was. And when I managed to pull my eyes from her boobs and saw her staring me down, I knew she knew who I was too. And that she knew that I knew who she was. Even without touching me.
She was Muse.
Muse’s ability, by the way, is that she’s able to telepathically like with something by touching them. And if she opens a conversation, then you can talk back.
Also, a strange aside of her power was enough physical strength to punch a hole in an adult rhino from tip to tail. I’d seen it before; it was fucked up to watch. It was one of those rare white ones, too.
She quit the Pitch Brotherhood the previous year, deciding to settle for a life that didn’t explain all the blood to her drycleaner, and got the tattoo to remember her time with us. There were tears and hugs and well-wishes and an orgy of blood-filled chaos as we decimated the streets in her honor and cake.
And right now, she saw that I was on a date with her cousin, glaring at me with those icy green eyes. God, I wanted that bitch to step on me.
And when she called her boyfriend over to the table, I nearly shat myself.
He looked a few inches shorter, wore his hair differently, and had on a super thick pair of glasses, but I could tell who it was. If not for the unmasking three months before, I’d never recognized One in public.
She introduced him as Darryl, an elementary school teacher who was writing a screenplay in his free time. The fact that he was a teacher was made clear at the reveal, but he’d never said anything about writing a screenplay. That pissed me off. If he had the idea to recount his adventures as a hero and pass it off as some sort of creative masterpiece, he had another thing coming.
That asshole Hoplite demanded my only copy of my screenplay about my adventures as a villain that I wanted to pass off as a creative master piece last year and hadn’t returned it yet or even given me any feedback. I know that bastard lost it, and it would take forever to replicate because I couldn’t control my burgeoning genius and handwrote all eight-hundred pages on specialty paper that cost roughly four-fifty a sheet.
I got pretty nervous when One looked down at me.
He shot me a charming smile, we exchanged greetings, and he extended his hand.
I hesitated. I fought him constantly for the last five years and he’d finally seen me unmasked just a few months prior. What if he used this as his chance to take me out? I gingerly grabbed his hand and shook it.
He chuckled, told me I had the limp grasp, and muse playfully smacked him.
And then the waitress came to us, finally, and then made the assumption that we’d all be eating together. So of course, they joined us so that Dalia could catch up with her cousin.
Admittedly, One was good at keeping a conversation going. He kept probing me with questions, obviously; I was apparently the only stranger at the table. But the way he asked questions left plenty of room to expand on. And he was courteous enough to kind of facilitate the flow of my date in a pretty good direction. It was pretty nice.
Or it would have been if I couldn’t stop focusing on how Muse kept holding his hand. I knew she was talking to him about me. I could see it in her eyes.
Then, it happened.
I cracked a joke to make Sophie laugh. Sophie giggled. One chuckled. Muse, apparently, found it so fucking hilarious that she burst out laughing and reached a mile across the table to tap my arm.
The music in the restaurant got quiet, the interior grayed, and time ground to a stop. I could hear Muse in my head. And she wasn’t happy.
I explained, honestly that I was just on a date and hadn’t gotten up to anything. That Sophie was nice and I felt there was a genuine connection. Muse was skeptical, but accepting.
I pride myself on not being a snitch. I once lost a leg because I refused to snitch—luckily, it grew back. Were this a normal conversation, and were I able to control my mouth, I wouldn’t have said this. But, because she was directly in my mind and able to hear anything that was at the forefront of it, I uncontrollably asked if she knew that she was dating One.
I was stunned. She said yes.
He also knew that she was formerly Muse. They knew what each other’s powers were. They were talking about me the entire night. And, probably because she could hear all my thoughts about her breasts, she said that she knew she would leave after dinner the main course so that she could go back to his place and eat dessert off each other.
Moving past clouds of erotic imagery, and the inevitable truth that I’d be jacking off to it later, she found the question I had about what specifically they were saying about me. She told me that I seemed like a nice guy, if a bit too ugly to be dating Sophie.
I asked if that was it. She said yes.
I was confused and asked if he knew who I was.
She said he had no idea who I was.
I went blank. My mind itself went silent at what she’d said.
Muse took that as the end of the conversation and pulled her from me, finishing her laugh a bit more robotically than it started.
One didn’t know who I was? We saw each other unmasked. It was only three months ago, there were only seven fresh faces to remember. Did it not even click back into place for him when he saw me again?
Who the fuck did he think he was? I was his nemesis. Not some bank robber he’d down with a one-two combo, toss in a jailcell, and never see again. I was his nemesis! I devoted two to three days a week to messing with him for the last five father-fucking years. And this is what he thinks of me? Nothing? Fucking nothing?
Was it because I wasn’t writing him some lame limericks and dropping them all over the city to solve like some sort of asshole C-lister who got the short straw on the day when he had to pick a theme? Is it because I didn’t stalk him and know literally every facet of every action he took in every crime he ever stopped; because I didn’t know the exact number of times his heart had beat or how many hairs were growing out of his fat ass?
Was he staring at King Chrome, or should I say Orville, the whole time during our exchange?
I guess it’s my fault for not being a freak of nature science experiment with the strength to punch Washington’s face off of Rushmore. I guess it’s my fault for not being some tragic basket case with perfectly fine mental health. I guess it’s my fault for not inheriting a trillion dollars from my dead grandad and using it to building a gaudy silver suit, flying over cities on a jetpack and launching rockets from my cock.
What was I supposed to do now? Rob Fort Knox? Blow up the Vatican? Eat a baby? Fuck the elderly woman who adopted him?
That was the bullshittiest bullshit I’d ever heard. What a fucking asshole!
Apparently, I was a little too quiet for a little too long. Muse took the time to reach across the table and shake me back to reality.
When the world grayed again, she took the time to tell me that if I fucked her cousin, she’d grab me by the throat, leap into the air, and toss me into the turbine of a passing plane.
And that’s why I went back to Blaze.
[WP] After repeatedly losing to the powers of love and friendship villains have decided to try to harness that power for themselves. They started a dating site and you're on your first date. Things are going well, until your arch nemesis barges in thinking this is another one of your plans.
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Text
Instagram caught selling ads to follower-buying services it banned
Instagram has been earning money from businesses flooding its social network with spam notifications. Instagram hypocritically continues to sell ad space to services that charge clients for fake followers or that automatically follow/unfollow other people to get them to follow the client back. This is despite Instagram reiterating a ban on these businesses in November and threatening the accounts of people who employ them.
A TechCrunch investigation initially found 17 services selling fake followers or automated notification spam for luring in followers that were openly advertising on Instagram despite blatantly violating the network’s policies. This demonstrates Instagram’s failure to adequately police its app and ad platform. That neglect led to users being distracted by notifications for follows and Likes generated by bots or fake accounts. Instagram raked in revenue from these services while they diluted the quality of Instagram notifications and wasted people’s time.
In response to our investigation, Instagram tells me it’s removed all ads as well as disabled all the Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts of the services we reported were violating its policies. Pages and accounts that themselves weren’t in violation but whose ads were have been banned from advertising on Facebook and Instagram. However, a day later TechCrunch still found ads from two of these services on Instagram, and discovered five more companies paying to promote policy-violating follower growth services.
This raises a big question about whether Instagram properly protects its community from spammers. Why would it take a journalist’s investigation to remove these ads and businesses that brazenly broke Instagram’s rules when the company is supposed to have technical and human moderation systems in place? The Facebook-owned app’s quest to “move fast” to grow its user base and business seems to have raced beyond what its watchdogs could safeguard.
Hunting Spammers
I first began this investigation a month ago after being pestered with Instagram Stories ads by a service called GramGorilla. The slicked-back hipster salesmen boasted how many followers he gained with the service and that I could pay to do the same. The ads linked to the website of a division of Krends Marketing where for $46 to $126 per month, it promised to score me 1000 to 2500 Instagram followers.
Some apps like this sell followers directly, though these are typically fake accounts. They might boost your follower count (unless they’re detected and terminated) but won’t actually engage with your content or help your business, and end up dragging down your metrics so Instagram shows your posts to fewer people. But I discovered that GramGorilla/Krends and the majority of apps selling Instagram audience growth do something even worse.
You give these scammy businesses your Instagram username and password, plus some relevant topics or demographics, and they automatically follow and unfollow, like, and comment on strangers’ Instagram profiles. The goal is to generate notifications those strangers will see in hopes that they’ll get curious or want to reciprocate and so therefore follow you back. By triggering enough of this notification spam, they trick enough strangers to follow you to justify the monthly subscription fee.
That pissed me off. Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks send enough real notifications as is, growth hacking their way to more engagement, ad views, and daily user counts. But at least they have to weigh the risk of annoying you so much that you turn off notifications all together. Services that sell followers don’t care if they pollute Instagram and ruin your experience as long as they make money. They’re classic villains in the ‘tragedy of the commons’ of our attention.
This led me to start cataloging these spam company ads, and I was startled by how many different ones I saw. Soon, Instagram’s ad targeting and retargeting algorithms were backfiring, purposefully feeding me ads for similar companies that also violated Instagram’s policies.
The 17 services selling followers or spam that I originally indexed were Krends Marketing / GramGorilla, SocialUpgrade, MagicSocial, EZ-Grow, Xplod Social, Macurex, GoGrowthly, Instashop / IG Shops, TrendBee, JW Social Media Marketing, YR Charisma, Instagrocery, SocialSensational, SocialFuse, WeGrowSocial, IGWildfire, and GramFlare. TrendBee and GramFlare were found to still be running Instagram ads after the platform said they’ve been banned from doing so. Upon further investigation after Instagram’s supposed crackdown, I discovered five more services sell prohibited growth services: FireSocial, InstaMason/IWentMissing, NexStore2019, InstaGrow, and Servantify.
Knowingly Poisoning The Well
I wanted to find out if these companies were aware that they violate Instagram’s policies and how they justify generating spam. Most hide their contact info and merely provide a customer support email, but eventually I was able to get on the phone with some of the founders.
“What we’re doing is obviously against their terms of service” said GoGrowthly’s co-founder who refused to provide their name. “We’re going in and piggybacking off their free platform and not giving them any of the revenue. Instagram doesn’t like us at all. We utilize private proxies depending on clients’ geographic location. That’s sort of our trick to reduce any sort of liability” so clients’ accounts don’t get shut down, they said. “It’s a careful line that we tread with Instagram. Similar to SEO companies and Google, Google wants the best results for customers and customers want the best results for them. There’s a delicate dance” said Macurex founder Gun Hudson.
EZ-Grow’s co-founder Elon refused to give his last name on the record, but told me “[Clients] always need something new. At first it was follows and likes. Now we even watch Stories for them. Every new feature that Instagram has we take advantage of it to make more visibility for our clients.” He says EZ-Grow spends $500 per day on Instagram ads, which are its core strategy for finding new customers. SocialFuse founder Alexander Heit says his company spends a couple hundred dollars per day on Instagram and Facebook ads, and was worried when Instagram reiterated its ban on his kind of service in November, but says “We thought that we were definitely going to get shut down but nothing has changed on our end.”
Several of the founders tried to defend their notification spam services by saying that at least they weren’t selling fake followers. Lacking any self-awareness, Macurex’s Hudson said “If it’s done the wrong way it can ruin the user experience. There are all sorts of marketers who will market in untasteful or spammy ways. Instagram needs to keep a check on that.” GoGrowthly’s founder actually told me “We’re actually doing good for the community by generating those targeted interactions.” WeGrowSocial’s co-founder Brandon also refused to give his last name, but was willing to rat out his competitor SocialSensational for selling followers.
Only EZ-Grow’s Elon seemed to have a moment of clarity. “Because the targeting goes to the right people . . . and it’s something they would like, it’s not spam” he said before his epiphany. “People can also look at it as spam, maybe.”
Instagram Finally Shuts Down The Spammers
In response to our findings, an Instagram spokesperson provided this lengthy statement confirming it’s shut down the ads and accounts of the violators we discovered, claiming that it works hard to fight spam, and admitting it needs to do better:
“Nobody likes receiving spammy follows, likes and comments. It’s really important to us that the interactions people have on Instagram are genuine, and we’re working hard to keep the community free from spammy behavior. Services that offer to boost an account’s popularity via inauthentic likes, comments and followers, as well as ads that promote these services, aren’t allowed on Instagram. We’ve taken action on the services raised in this article, including removing violating ads, disabling Pages and accounts, and stopping Pages from placing further ads. We have various systems in place that help us catch and remove these types of ads before anyone sees them, but given the number of ads uploaded to our platform every day, there are times when some still manage to slip through. We know we have more to do in this area and we’re committed to improving.”
Instagram tells me it uses machine learning tools to identify accounts that pay third-party apps to boost their popularity and claims to remove inauthentic engagement before it reaches the recipient of the notifications. By nullifying the results of these services, Instagram believes users will have less incentive to use them. It uses automated systems to evaluate the images, captions, and landing pages of all its ads before they run, and sends some to human moderators. It claims this lets it catch most policy-violating ads, and that users can report those it misses.
But these ads and their associated accounts were filled with terms like “get followers”, “boost your Instagram followers”, “real followers”, “grow your engagement”, “get verified”, “engagement automation”, and other terms tightly linked to policy-violating services. That casts doubt on just how hard Instagram was working on this problem. It may have simply relied on cheap and scalable technical approaches to catching services with spam bots or fake accounts instead of properly screening ads or employing sufficient numbers of human moderators to police the network.
That misplaced dependence on AI and other tech solutions appears to be a trend in the industry. When I recently reported that child sexual abuse imagery was easy to find on WhatsApp and Microsoft Bing, both seemed to be understaffing the human moderation team that could have hunted down this illegal content with common sense where complex algorithms failed. As with Instagram, these products have highly profitable parent companies who can afford to pour more dollars in policy enforcement.
Kicking these services off Instagram is an important step, but the company must be more proactive. Social networks and self-serve ad networks have been treated as efficient cash cows for too long. The profits from these products should be reinvested in policing them. Otherwise, crooks will happily fleece users for our money and attention.
To learn more about the future of Instagram, check out this article’s author Josh Constine’s SXSW 2019 keynote with Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger — their first talk together since leaving the company.
Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it suggests it
WhatsApp has an encrypted child porn problem
from iraidajzsmmwtv http://bit.ly/2RzxnO0
via IFTTT
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Link
Instagram has been earning money from businesses flooding its social network with spam notifications. Instagram hypocritically continues to sell ad space to services that charge clients for fake followers or that automatically follow/unfollow other people to get them to follow the client back. This is despite Instagram reiterating a ban on these businesses in November and threatening the accounts of people who employ them.
A TechCrunch investigation initially found 17 services selling fake followers or automated notification spam for luring in followers that were openly advertising on Instagram despite blatantly violating the network’s policies. This demonstrates Instagram’s failure to adequately police its app and ad platform. That neglect led to users being distracted by notifications for follows and Likes generated by bots or fake accounts. Instagram raked in revenue from these services while they diluted the quality of Instagram notifications and wasted people’s time.
In response to our investigation, Instagram tells me it’s removed all ads as well as disabled all the Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts of the services we reported were violating its policies. Pages and accounts that themselves weren’t in violation but whose ads were have been banned from advertising on Facebook and Instagram. However, a day later TechCrunch still found ads from two of these services on Instagram, and discovered five more companies paying to promote policy-violating follower growth services.
This raises a big question about whether Instagram properly protects its community from spammers. Why would it take a journalist’s investigation to remove these ads and businesses that brazenly broke Instagram’s rules when the company is supposed to have technical and human moderation systems in place? The Facebook-owned app’s quest to “move fast” to grow its user base and business seems to have raced beyond what its watchdogs could safeguard.
Hunting Spammers
I first began this investigation a month ago after being pestered with Instagram Stories ads by a service called GramGorilla. The slicked-back hipster salesmen boasted how many followers he gained with the service and that I could pay to do the same. The ads linked to the website of a division of Krends Marketing where for $46 to $126 per month, it promised to score me 1000 to 2500 Instagram followers.
Some apps like this sell followers directly, though these are typically fake accounts. They might boost your follower count (unless they’re detected and terminated) but won’t actually engage with your content or help your business, and end up dragging down your metrics so Instagram shows your posts to fewer people. But I discovered that GramGorilla/Krends and the majority of apps selling Instagram audience growth do something even worse.
You give these scammy businesses your Instagram username and password, plus some relevant topics or demographics, and they automatically follow and unfollow, like, and comment on strangers’ Instagram profiles. The goal is to generate notifications those strangers will see in hopes that they’ll get curious or want to reciprocate and so therefore follow you back. By triggering enough of this notification spam, they trick enough strangers to follow you to justify the monthly subscription fee.
That pissed me off. Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks send enough real notifications as is, growth hacking their way to more engagement, ad views, and daily user counts. But at least they have to weigh the risk of annoying you so much that you turn off notifications all together. Services that sell followers don’t care if they pollute Instagram and ruin your experience as long as they make money. They’re classic villains in the ‘tragedy of the commons’ of our attention.
This led me to start cataloging these spam company ads, and I was startled by how many different ones I saw. Soon, Instagram’s ad targeting and retargeting algorithms were backfiring, purposefully feeding me ads for similar companies that also violated Instagram’s policies.
The 17 services selling followers or spam that I originally indexed were Krends Marketing / GramGorilla, SocialUpgrade, MagicSocial, EZ-Grow, Xplod Social, Macurex, GoGrowthly, Instashop / IG Shops, TrendBee, JW Social Media Marketing, YR Charisma, Instagrocery, SocialSensational, SocialFuse, WeGrowSocial, IGWildfire, and GramFlare. TrendBee and GramFlare were found to still be running Instagram ads after the platform said they’ve been banned from doing so. Upon further investigation after Instagram’s supposed crackdown, I discovered five more services sell prohibited growth services: FireSocial, InstaMason/IWentMissing, NexStore2019, InstaGrow, and Servantify.
Knowingly Poisoning The Well
I wanted to find out if these companies were aware that they violate Instagram’s policies and how they justify generating spam. Most hide their contact info and merely provide a customer support email, but eventually I was able to get on the phone with some of the founders.
“What we’re doing is obviously against their terms of service” said GoGrowthly’s co-founder who refused to provide their name. “We’re going in and piggybacking off their free platform and not giving them any of the revenue. Instagram doesn’t like us at all. We utilize private proxies depending on clients’ geographic location. That’s sort of our trick to reduce any sort of liability” so clients’ accounts don’t get shut down, they said. “It’s a careful line that we tread with Instagram. Similar to SEO companies and Google, Google wants the best results for customers and customers want the best results for them. There’s a delicate dance” said Macurex founder Gun Hudson.
EZ-Grow’s co-founder Elon refused to give his last name on the record, but told me “[Clients] always need something new. At first it was follows and likes. Now we even watch Stories for them. Every new feature that Instagram has we take advantage of it to make more visibility for our clients.” He says EZ-Grow spends $500 per day on Instagram ads, which are its core strategy for finding new customers. SocialFuse founder Alexander Heit says his company spends a couple hundred dollars per day on Instagram and Facebook ads, and was worried when Instagram reiterated its ban on his kind of service in November, but says “We thought that we were definitely going to get shut down but nothing has changed on our end.”
Several of the founders tried to defend their notification spam services by saying that at least they weren’t selling fake followers. Lacking any self-awareness, Macurex’s Hudson said “If it’s done the wrong way it can ruin the user experience. There are all sorts of marketers who will market in untasteful or spammy ways. Instagram needs to keep a check on that.” GoGrowthly’s founder actually told me “We’re actually doing good for the community by generating those targeted interactions.” WeGrowSocial’s co-founder Brandon also refused to give his last name, but was willing to rat out his competitor SocialSensational for selling followers.
Only EZ-Grow’s Elon seemed to have a moment of clarity. “Because the targeting goes to the right people . . . and it’s something they would like, it’s not spam” he said before his epiphany. “People can also look at it as spam, maybe.”
Instagram Finally Shuts Down The Spammers
In response to our findings, an Instagram spokesperson provided this lengthy statement confirming it’s shut down the ads and accounts of the violators we discovered, claiming that it works hard to fight spam, and admitting it needs to do better:
“Nobody likes receiving spammy follows, likes and comments. It’s really important to us that the interactions people have on Instagram are genuine, and we’re working hard to keep the community free from spammy behavior. Services that offer to boost an account’s popularity via inauthentic likes, comments and followers, as well as ads that promote these services, aren’t allowed on Instagram. We’ve taken action on the services raised in this article, including removing violating ads, disabling Pages and accounts, and stopping Pages from placing further ads. We have various systems in place that help us catch and remove these types of ads before anyone sees them, but given the number of ads uploaded to our platform every day, there are times when some still manage to slip through. We know we have more to do in this area and we’re committed to improving.”
Instagram tells me it uses machine learning tools to identify accounts that pay third-party apps to boost their popularity and claims to remove inauthentic engagement before it reaches the recipient of the notifications. By nullifying the results of these services, Instagram believes users will have less incentive to use them. It uses automated systems to evaluate the images, captions, and landing pages of all its ads before they run, and sends some to human moderators. It claims this lets it catch most policy-violating ads, and that users can report those it misses.
But these ads and their associated accounts were filled with terms like “get followers”, “boost your Instagram followers”, “real followers”, “grow your engagement”, “get verified”, “engagement automation”, and other terms tightly linked to policy-violating services. That casts doubt on just how hard Instagram was working on this problem. It may have simply relied on cheap and scalable technical approaches to catching services with spam bots or fake accounts instead of properly screening ads or employing sufficient numbers of human moderators to police the network.
That misplaced dependence on AI and other tech solutions appears to be a trend in the industry. When I recently reported that child sexual abuse imagery was easy to find on WhatsApp and Microsoft Bing, both seemed to be understaffing the human moderation team that could have hunted down this illegal content with common sense where complex algorithms failed. As with Instagram, these products have highly profitable parent companies who can afford to pour more dollars in policy enforcement.
Kicking these services off Instagram is an important step, but the company must be more proactive. Social networks and self-serve ad networks have been treated as efficient cash cows for too long. The profits from these products should be reinvested in policing them. Otherwise, crooks will happily fleece users for our money and attention.
To learn more about the future of Instagram, check out this article’s author Josh Constine’s SXSW 2019 keynote with Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger — their first talk together since leaving the company.
Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it suggests it
WhatsApp has an encrypted child porn problem
from Social – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2FAZzsw
Original Content From: https://techcrunch.com
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Text
Instagram caught selling ads to follower-buying services it banned
Instagram has been earning money from businesses flooding its social network with spam notifications. Instagram hypocritically continues to sell ad space to services that charge clients for fake followers or that automatically follow/unfollow other people to get them to follow the client back. This is despite Instagram reiterating a ban on these businesses in November and threatening the accounts of people who employ them.
A TechCrunch investigation initially found 17 services selling fake followers or automated notification spam for luring in followers that were openly advertising on Instagram despite blatantly violating the network’s policies. This demonstrates Instagram’s failure to adequately police its app and ad platform. That neglect led to users being distracted by notifications for follows and Likes generated by bots or fake accounts. Instagram raked in revenue from these services while they diluted the quality of Instagram notifications and wasted people’s time.
In response to our investigation, Instagram tells me it’s removed all ads as well as disabled all the Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts of the services we reported were violating its policies. Pages and accounts that themselves weren’t in violation but whose ads were have been banned from advertising on Facebook and Instagram. However, a day later TechCrunch still found ads from two of these services on Instagram, and discovered five more companies paying to promote policy-violating follower growth services.
This raises a big question about whether Instagram properly protects its community from spammers. Why would it take a journalist’s investigation to remove these ads and businesses that brazenly broke Instagram’s rules when the company is supposed to have technical and human moderation systems in place? The Facebook-owned app’s quest to “move fast” to grow its user base and business seems to have raced beyond what its watchdogs could safeguard.
Hunting Spammers
I first began this investigation a month ago after being pestered with Instagram Stories ads by a service called GramGorilla. The slicked-back hipster salesmen boasted how many followers he gained with the service and that I could pay to do the same. The ads linked to the website of a division of Krends Marketing where for $46 to $126 per month, it promised to score me 1000 to 2500 Instagram followers.
Some apps like this sell followers directly, though these are typically fake accounts. They might boost your follower count (unless they’re detected and terminated) but won’t actually engage with your content or help your business, and end up dragging down your metrics so Instagram shows your posts to fewer people. But I discovered that GramGorilla/Krends and the majority of apps selling Instagram audience growth do something even worse.
You give these scammy businesses your Instagram username and password, plus some relevant topics or demographics, and they automatically follow and unfollow, like, and comment on strangers’ Instagram profiles. The goal is to generate notifications those strangers will see in hopes that they’ll get curious or want to reciprocate and so therefore follow you back. By triggering enough of this notification spam, they trick enough strangers to follow you to justify the monthly subscription fee.
That pissed me off. Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks send enough real notifications as is, growth hacking their way to more engagement, ad views, and daily user counts. But at least they have to weigh the risk of annoying you so much that you turn off notifications all together. Services that sell followers don’t care if they pollute Instagram and ruin your experience as long as they make money. They’re classic villains in the ‘tragedy of the commons’ of our attention.
This led me to start cataloging these spam company ads, and I was startled by how many different ones I saw. Soon, Instagram’s ad targeting and retargeting algorithms were backfiring, purposefully feeding me ads for similar companies that also violated Instagram’s policies.
The 17 services selling followers or spam that I originally indexed were Krends Marketing / GramGorilla, SocialUpgrade, MagicSocial, EZ-Grow, Xplod Social, Macurex, GoGrowthly, Instashop / IG Shops, TrendBee, JW Social Media Marketing, YR Charisma, Instagrocery, SocialSensational, SocialFuse, WeGrowSocial, IGWildfire, and GramFlare. TrendBee and GramFlare were found to still be running Instagram ads after the platform said they’ve been banned from doing so. Upon further investigation after Instagram’s supposed crackdown, I discovered five more services sell prohibited growth services: FireSocial, InstaMason/IWentMissing, NexStore2019, InstaGrow, and Servantify.
Knowingly Poisoning The Well
I wanted to find out if these companies were aware that they violate Instagram’s policies and how they justify generating spam. Most hide their contact info and merely provide a customer support email, but eventually I was able to get on the phone with some of the founders.
“What we’re doing is obviously against their terms of service” said GoGrowthly’s co-founder who refused to provide their name. “We’re going in and piggybacking off their free platform and not giving them any of the revenue. Instagram doesn’t like us at all. We utilize private proxies depending on clients’ geographic location. That’s sort of our trick to reduce any sort of liability” so clients’ accounts don’t get shut down, they said. “It’s a careful line that we tread with Instagram. Similar to SEO companies and Google, Google wants the best results for customers and customers want the best results for them. There’s a delicate dance” said Macurex founder Gun Hudson.
EZ-Grow’s co-founder Elon refused to give his last name on the record, but told me “[Clients] always need something new. At first it was follows and likes. Now we even watch Stories for them. Every new feature that Instagram has we take advantage of it to make more visibility for our clients.” He says EZ-Grow spends $500 per day on Instagram ads, which are its core strategy for finding new customers. SocialFuse founder Alexander Heit says his company spends a couple hundred dollars per day on Instagram and Facebook ads, and was worried when Instagram reiterated its ban on his kind of service in November, but says “We thought that we were definitely going to get shut down but nothing has changed on our end.”
Several of the founders tried to defend their notification spam services by saying that at least they weren’t selling fake followers. Lacking any self-awareness, Macurex’s Hudson said “If it’s done the wrong way it can ruin the user experience. There are all sorts of marketers who will market in untasteful or spammy ways. Instagram needs to keep a check on that.” GoGrowthly’s founder actually told me “We’re actually doing good for the community by generating those targeted interactions.” WeGrowSocial’s co-founder Brandon also refused to give his last name, but was willing to rat out his competitor SocialSensational for selling followers.
Only EZ-Grow’s Elon seemed to have a moment of clarity. “Because the targeting goes to the right people . . . and it’s something they would like, it’s not spam” he said before his epiphany. “People can also look at it as spam, maybe.”
Instagram Finally Shuts Down The Spammers
In response to our findings, an Instagram spokesperson provided this lengthy statement confirming it’s shut down the ads and accounts of the violators we discovered, claiming that it works hard to fight spam, and admitting it needs to do better:
“Nobody likes receiving spammy follows, likes and comments. It’s really important to us that the interactions people have on Instagram are genuine, and we’re working hard to keep the community free from spammy behavior. Services that offer to boost an account’s popularity via inauthentic likes, comments and followers, as well as ads that promote these services, aren’t allowed on Instagram. We’ve taken action on the services raised in this article, including removing violating ads, disabling Pages and accounts, and stopping Pages from placing further ads. We have various systems in place that help us catch and remove these types of ads before anyone sees them, but given the number of ads uploaded to our platform every day, there are times when some still manage to slip through. We know we have more to do in this area and we’re committed to improving.”
Instagram tells me it uses machine learning tools to identify accounts that pay third-party apps to boost their popularity and claims to remove inauthentic engagement before it reaches the recipient of the notifications. By nullifying the results of these services, Instagram believes users will have less incentive to use them. It uses automated systems to evaluate the images, captions, and landing pages of all its ads before they run, and sends some to human moderators. It claims this lets it catch most policy-violating ads, and that users can report those it misses.
But these ads and their associated accounts were filled with terms like “get followers”, “boost your Instagram followers”, “real followers”, “grow your engagement”, “get verified”, “engagement automation”, and other terms tightly linked to policy-violating services. That casts doubt on just how hard Instagram was working on this problem. It may have simply relied on cheap and scalable technical approaches to catching services with spam bots or fake accounts instead of properly screening ads or employing sufficient numbers of human moderators to police the network.
That misplaced dependence on AI and other tech solutions appears to be a trend in the industry. When I recently reported that child sexual abuse imagery was easy to find on WhatsApp and Microsoft Bing, both seemed to be understaffing the human moderation team that could have hunted down this illegal content with common sense where complex algorithms failed. As with Instagram, these products have highly profitable parent companies who can afford to pour more dollars in policy enforcement.
Kicking these services off Instagram is an important step, but the company must be more proactive. Social networks and self-serve ad networks have been treated as efficient cash cows for too long. The profits from these products should be reinvested in policing them. Otherwise, crooks will happily fleece users for our money and attention.
To learn more about the future of Instagram, check out this article’s author Josh Constine’s SXSW 2019 keynote with Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger — their first talk together since leaving the company.
Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it suggests it
WhatsApp has an encrypted child porn problem
source https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/15/dont-buy-instagram-followers/
0 notes
Text
Instagram caught selling ads to follower-buying services it banned
Instagram has been earning money from businesses flooding its social network with spam notifications. Instagram hypocritically continues to sell ad space to services that charge clients for fake followers or that automatically follow/unfollow other people to get them to follow the client back. This is despite Instagram reiterating a ban on these businesses in November and threatening the accounts of people who employ them.
A TechCrunch investigation initially found 17 services selling fake followers or automated notification spam for luring in followers that were openly advertising on Instagram despite blatantly violating the network’s policies. This demonstrates Instagram’s failure to adequately police its app and ad platform. That neglect led to users being distracted by notifications for follows and Likes generated by bots or fake accounts. Instagram raked in revenue from these services while they diluted the quality of Instagram notifications and wasted people’s time.
In response to our investigation, Instagram tells me it’s removed all ads as well as disabled all the Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts of the services we reported were violating its policies. Pages and accounts that themselves weren’t in violation but whose ads were have been banned from advertising on Facebook and Instagram. However, a day later TechCrunch still found ads from two of these services on Instagram, and discovered five more companies paying to promote policy-violating follower growth services.
This raises a big question about whether Instagram properly protects its community from spammers. Why would it take a journalist’s investigation to remove these ads and businesses that brazenly broke Instagram’s rules when the company is supposed to have technical and human moderation systems in place? The Facebook-owned app’s quest to “move fast” to grow its user base and business seems to have raced beyond what its watchdogs could safeguard.
Hunting Spammers
I first began this investigation a month ago after being pestered with Instagram Stories ads by a service called GramGorilla. The slicked-back hipster salesmen boasted how many followers he gained with the service and that I could pay to do the same. The ads linked to the website of a division of Krends Marketing where for $46 to $126 per month, it promised to score me 1000 to 2500 Instagram followers.
Some apps like this sell followers directly, though these are typically fake accounts. They might boost your follower count (unless they’re detected and terminated) but won’t actually engage with your content or help your business, and end up dragging down your metrics so Instagram shows your posts to fewer people. But I discovered that GramGorilla/Krends and the majority of apps selling Instagram audience growth do something even worse.
You give these scammy businesses your Instagram username and password, plus some relevant topics or demographics, and they automatically follow and unfollow, like, and comment on strangers’ Instagram profiles. The goal is to generate notifications those strangers will see in hopes that they’ll get curious or want to reciprocate and so therefore follow you back. By triggering enough of this notification spam, they trick enough strangers to follow you to justify the monthly subscription fee.
That pissed me off. Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks send enough real notifications as is, growth hacking their way to more engagement, ad views, and daily user counts. But at least they have to weigh the risk of annoying you so much that you turn off notifications all together. Services that sell followers don’t care if they pollute Instagram and ruin your experience as long as they make money. They’re classic villains in the ‘tragedy of the commons’ of our attention.
This led me to start cataloging these spam company ads, and I was startled by how many different ones I saw. Soon, Instagram’s ad targeting and retargeting algorithms were backfiring, purposefully feeding me ads for similar companies that also violated Instagram’s policies.
The 17 services selling followers or spam that I originally indexed were Krends Marketing / GramGorilla, SocialUpgrade, MagicSocial, EZ-Grow, Xplod Social, Macurex, GoGrowthly, Instashop / IG Shops, TrendBee, JW Social Media Marketing, YR Charisma, Instagrocery, SocialSensational, SocialFuse, WeGrowSocial, IGWildfire, and GramFlare. TrendBee and GramFlare were found to still be running Instagram ads after the platform said they’ve been banned from doing so. Upon further investigation after Instagram’s supposed crackdown, I discovered five more services sell prohibited growth services: FireSocial, InstaMason/IWentMissing, NexStore2019, InstaGrow, and Servantify.
Knowingly Poisoning The Well
I wanted to find out if these companies were aware that they violate Instagram’s policies and how they justify generating spam. Most hide their contact info and merely provide a customer support email, but eventually I was able to get on the phone with some of the founders.
“What we’re doing is obviously against their terms of service” said GoGrowthly’s co-founder who refused to provide their name. “We’re going in and piggybacking off their free platform and not giving them any of the revenue. Instagram doesn’t like us at all. We utilize private proxies depending on clients’ geographic location. That’s sort of our trick to reduce any sort of liability” so clients’ accounts don’t get shut down, they said. “It’s a careful line that we tread with Instagram. Similar to SEO companies and Google, Google wants the best results for customers and customers want the best results for them. There’s a delicate dance” said Macurex founder Gun Hudson.
EZ-Grow’s co-founder Elon refused to give his last name on the record, but told me “[Clients] always need something new. At first it was follows and likes. Now we even watch Stories for them. Every new feature that Instagram has we take advantage of it to make more visibility for our clients.” He says EZ-Grow spends $500 per day on Instagram ads, which are its core strategy for finding new customers. SocialFuse founder Alexander Heit says his company spends a couple hundred dollars per day on Instagram and Facebook ads, and was worried when Instagram reiterated its ban on his kind of service in November, but says “We thought that we were definitely going to get shut down but nothing has changed on our end.”
Several of the founders tried to defend their notification spam services by saying that at least they weren’t selling fake followers. Lacking any self-awareness, Macurex’s Hudson said “If it’s done the wrong way it can ruin the user experience. There are all sorts of marketers who will market in untasteful or spammy ways. Instagram needs to keep a check on that.” GoGrowthly’s founder actually told me “We’re actually doing good for the community by generating those targeted interactions.” WeGrowSocial’s co-founder Brandon also refused to give his last name, but was willing to rat out his competitor SocialSensational for selling followers.
Only EZ-Grow’s Elon seemed to have a moment of clarity. “Because the targeting goes to the right people . . . and it’s something they would like, it’s not spam” he said before his epiphany. “People can also look at it as spam, maybe.”
Instagram Finally Shuts Down The Spammers
In response to our findings, an Instagram spokesperson provided this lengthy statement confirming it’s shut down the ads and accounts of the violators we discovered, claiming that it works hard to fight spam, and admitting it needs to do better:
“Nobody likes receiving spammy follows, likes and comments. It’s really important to us that the interactions people have on Instagram are genuine, and we’re working hard to keep the community free from spammy behavior. Services that offer to boost an account’s popularity via inauthentic likes, comments and followers, as well as ads that promote these services, aren’t allowed on Instagram. We’ve taken action on the services raised in this article, including removing violating ads, disabling Pages and accounts, and stopping Pages from placing further ads. We have various systems in place that help us catch and remove these types of ads before anyone sees them, but given the number of ads uploaded to our platform every day, there are times when some still manage to slip through. We know we have more to do in this area and we’re committed to improving.”
Instagram tells me it uses machine learning tools to identify accounts that pay third-party apps to boost their popularity and claims to remove inauthentic engagement before it reaches the recipient of the notifications. By nullifying the results of these services, Instagram believes users will have less incentive to use them. It uses automated systems to evaluate the images, captions, and landing pages of all its ads before they run, and sends some to human moderators. It claims this lets it catch most policy-violating ads, and that users can report those it misses.
But these ads and their associated accounts were filled with terms like “get followers”, “boost your Instagram followers”, “real followers”, “grow your engagement”, “get verified”, “engagement automation”, and other terms tightly linked to policy-violating services. That casts doubt on just how hard Instagram was working on this problem. It may have simply relied on cheap and scalable technical approaches to catching services with spam bots or fake accounts instead of properly screening ads or employing sufficient numbers of human moderators to police the network.
That misplaced dependence on AI and other tech solutions appears to be a trend in the industry. When I recently reported that child sexual abuse imagery was easy to find on WhatsApp and Microsoft Bing, both seemed to be understaffing the human moderation team that could have hunted down this illegal content with common sense where complex algorithms failed. As with Instagram, these products have highly profitable parent companies who can afford to pour more dollars in policy enforcement.
Social networks and self-serve ad networks have been treated as efficient cash cows for too long. The profits from these products should be reinvested in policing them. Otherwise, crooks will happily fleece users for our money and attention.
To learn more about the future of Instagram, check out this article’s author Josh Constine’s SXSW 2019 keynote with Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger — their first talk together since leaving the company.
Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it suggests it
WhatsApp has an encrypted child porn problem
Via Josh Constine https://techcrunch.com
0 notes
Text
Instagram caught selling ads to follower-buying services it banned
Instagram has been earning money from businesses flooding its social network with spam notifications. Instagram hypocritically continues to sell ad space to services that charge clients for fake followers or that automatically follow/unfollow other people to get them to follow the client back. This is despite Instagram reiterating a ban on these businesses in November and threatening the accounts of people who employ them.
A TechCrunch investigation initially found 17 services selling fake followers or automated notification spam for luring in followers that were openly advertising on Instagram despite blatantly violating the network’s policies. This demonstrates Instagram’s failure to adequately police its app and ad platform. That neglect led to users being distracted by notifications for follows and Likes generated by bots or fake accounts. Instagram raked in revenue from these services while they diluted the quality of Instagram notifications and wasted people’s time.
In response to our investigation, Instagram tells me it’s removed all ads as well as disabled all the Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts of the services we reported were violating its policies. Pages and accounts that themselves weren’t in violation but whose ads were have been banned from advertising on Facebook and Instagram. However, a day later TechCrunch still found ads from two of these services on Instagram, and discovered five more companies paying to promote policy-violating follower growth services.
This raises a big question about whether Instagram properly protects its community from spammers. Why would it take a journalist’s investigation to remove these ads and businesses that brazenly broke Instagram’s rules when the company is supposed to have technical and human moderation systems in place? The Facebook-owned app’s quest to “move fast” to grow its user base and business seems to have raced beyond what its watchdogs could safeguard.
Hunting Spammers
I first began this investigation a month ago after being pestered with Instagram Stories ads by a service called GramGorilla. The slicked-back hipster salesmen boasted how many followers he gained with the service and that I could pay to do the same. The ads linked to the website of a division of Krends Marketing where for $46 to $126 per month, it promised to score me 1000 to 2500 Instagram followers.
Some apps like this sell followers directly, though these are typically fake accounts. They might boost your follower count (unless they’re detected and terminated) but won’t actually engage with your content or help your business, and end up dragging down your metrics so Instagram shows your posts to fewer people. But I discovered that GramGorilla/Krends and the majority of apps selling Instagram audience growth do something even worse.
You give these scammy businesses your Instagram username and password, plus some relevant topics or demographics, and they automatically follow and unfollow, like, and comment on strangers’ Instagram profiles. The goal is to generate notifications those strangers will see in hopes that they’ll get curious or want to reciprocate and so therefore follow you back. By triggering enough of this notification spam, they trick enough strangers to follow you to justify the monthly subscription fee.
That pissed me off. Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks send enough real notifications as is, growth hacking their way to more engagement, ad views, and daily user counts. But at least they have to weigh the risk of annoying you so much that you turn off notifications all together. Services that sell followers don’t care if they pollute Instagram and ruin your experience as long as they make money. They’re classic villains in the ‘tragedy of the commons’ of our attention.
This led me to start cataloging these spam company ads, and I was startled by how many different ones I saw. Soon, Instagram’s ad targeting and retargeting algorithms were backfiring, purposefully feeding me ads for similar companies that also violated Instagram’s policies.
The 17 services selling followers or spam that I originally indexed were Krends Marketing / GramGorilla, SocialUpgrade, MagicSocial, EZ-Grow, Xplod Social, Macurex, GoGrowthly, Instashop / IG Shops, TrendBee, JW Social Media Marketing, YR Charisma, Instagrocery, SocialSensational, SocialFuse, WeGrowSocial, IGWildfire, and GramFlare. TrendBee and GramFlare were found to still be running Instagram ads after the platform said they’ve been banned from doing so. Upon further investigation after Instagram’s supposed crackdown, I discovered five more services sell prohibited growth services: FireSocial, InstaMason/IWentMissing, NexStore2019, InstaGrow, and Servantify.
Knowingly Poisoning The Well
I wanted to find out if these companies were aware that they violate Instagram’s policies and how they justify generating spam. Most hide their contact info and merely provide a customer support email, but eventually I was able to get on the phone with some of the founders.
“What we’re doing is obviously against their terms of service” said GoGrowthly’s co-founder who refused to provide their name. “We’re going in and piggybacking off their free platform and not giving them any of the revenue. Instagram doesn’t like us at all. We utilize private proxies depending on clients’ geographic location. That’s sort of our trick to reduce any sort of liability” so clients’ accounts don’t get shut down, they said. “It’s a careful line that we tread with Instagram. Similar to SEO companies and Google, Google wants the best results for customers and customers want the best results for them. There’s a delicate dance” said Macurex founder Gun Hudson.
EZ-Grow’s co-founder Elon refused to give his last name on the record, but told me “[Clients] always need something new. At first it was follows and likes. Now we even watch Stories for them. Every new feature that Instagram has we take advantage of it to make more visibility for our clients.” He says EZ-Grow spends $500 per day on Instagram ads, which are its core strategy for finding new customers. SocialFuse founder Alexander Heit says his company spends a couple hundred dollars per day on Instagram and Facebook ads, and was worried when Instagram reiterated its ban on his kind of service in November, but says “We thought that we were definitely going to get shut down but nothing has changed on our end.”
Several of the founders tried to defend their notification spam services by saying that at least they weren’t selling fake followers. Lacking any self-awareness, Macurex’s Hudson said “If it’s done the wrong way it can ruin the user experience. There are all sorts of marketers who will market in untasteful or spammy ways. Instagram needs to keep a check on that.” GoGrowthly’s founder actually told me “We’re actually doing good for the community by generating those targeted interactions.” WeGrowSocial’s co-founder Brandon also refused to give his last name, but was willing to rat out his competitor SocialSensational for selling followers.
Only EZ-Grow’s Elon seemed to have a moment of clarity. “Because the targeting goes to the right people . . . and it’s something they would like, it’s not spam” he said before his epiphany. “People can also look at it as spam, maybe.”
Instagram Finally Shuts Down The Spammers
In response to our findings, an Instagram spokesperson provided this lengthy statement confirming it’s shut down the ads and accounts of the violators we discovered, claiming that it works hard to fight spam, and admitting it needs to do better:
“Nobody likes receiving spammy follows, likes and comments. It’s really important to us that the interactions people have on Instagram are genuine, and we’re working hard to keep the community free from spammy behavior. Services that offer to boost an account’s popularity via inauthentic likes, comments and followers, as well as ads that promote these services, aren’t allowed on Instagram. We’ve taken action on the services raised in this article, including removing violating ads, disabling Pages and accounts, and stopping Pages from placing further ads. We have various systems in place that help us catch and remove these types of ads before anyone sees them, but given the number of ads uploaded to our platform every day, there are times when some still manage to slip through. We know we have more to do in this area and we’re committed to improving.”
Instagram tells me it uses machine learning tools to identify accounts that pay third-party apps to boost their popularity and claims to remove inauthentic engagement before it reaches the recipient of the notifications. By nullifying the results of these services, Instagram believes users will have less incentive to use them. It uses automated systems to evaluate the images, captions, and landing pages of all its ads before they run, and sends some to human moderators. It claims this lets it catch most policy-violating ads, and that users can report those it misses.
But these ads and their associated accounts were filled with terms like “get followers”, “boost your Instagram followers”, “real followers”, “grow your engagement”, “get verified”, “engagement automation”, and other terms tightly linked to policy-violating services. That casts doubt on just how hard Instagram was working on this problem. It may have simply relied on cheap and scalable technical approaches to catching services with spam bots or fake accounts instead of properly screening ads or employing sufficient numbers of human moderators to police the network.
That misplaced dependence on AI and other tech solutions appears to be a trend in the industry. When I recently reported that child sexual abuse imagery was easy to find on WhatsApp and Microsoft Bing, both seemed to be understaffing the human moderation team that could have hunted down this illegal content with common sense where complex algorithms failed. As with Instagram, these products have highly profitable parent companies who can afford to pour more dollars in policy enforcement.
Kicking these services off Instagram is an important step, but the company must be more proactive. Social networks and self-serve ad networks have been treated as efficient cash cows for too long. The profits from these products should be reinvested in policing them. Otherwise, crooks will happily fleece users for our money and attention.
To learn more about the future of Instagram, check out this article’s author Josh Constine’s SXSW 2019 keynote with Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger — their first talk together since leaving the company.
Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it suggests it
WhatsApp has an encrypted child porn problem
from iraidajzsmmwtv https://tcrn.ch/2FAZzsw
via IFTTT
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Link
Instagram has been earning money from businesses flooding its social network with spam notifications. Instagram hypocritically continues to sell ad space to services that charge clients for fake followers or that automatically follow/unfollow other people to get them to follow the client back. This is despite Instagram reiterating a ban on these businesses in November and threatening the accounts of people who employ them.
A TechCrunch investigation initially found 17 services selling fake followers or automated notification spam for luring in followers that were openly advertising on Instagram despite blatantly violating the network’s policies. This demonstrates Instagram’s failure to adequately police its app and ad platform. That neglect led to users being distracted by notifications for follows and Likes generated by bots or fake accounts. Instagram raked in revenue from these services while they diluted the quality of Instagram notifications and wasted people’s time.
In response to our investigation, Instagram tells me it’s removed all ads as well as disabled all the Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts of the services we reported were violating its policies. Pages and accounts that themselves weren’t in violation but whose ads were have been banned from advertising on Facebook and Instagram. However, a day later TechCrunch still found ads from two of these services on Instagram, and discovered five more companies paying to promote policy-violating follower growth services.
This raises a big question about whether Instagram properly protects its community from spammers. Why would it take a journalist’s investigation to remove these ads and businesses that brazenly broke Instagram’s rules when the company is supposed to have technical and human moderation systems in place? The Facebook-owned app’s quest to “move fast” to grow its user base and business seems to have raced beyond what its watchdogs could safeguard.
Hunting Spammers
I first began this investigation a month ago after being pestered with Instagram Stories ads by a service called GramGorilla. The slicked-back hipster salesmen boasted how many followers he gained with the service and that I could pay to do the same. The ads linked to the website of a division of Krends Marketing where for $46 to $126 per month, it promised to score me 1000 to 2500 Instagram followers.
Some apps like this sell followers directly, though these are typically fake accounts. They might boost your follower count (unless they’re detected and terminated) but won’t actually engage with your content or help your business, and end up dragging down your metrics so Instagram shows your posts to fewer people. But I discovered that GramGorilla/Krends and the majority of apps selling Instagram audience growth do something even worse.
You give these scammy businesses your Instagram username and password, plus some relevant topics or demographics, and they automatically follow and unfollow, like, and comment on strangers’ Instagram profiles. The goal is to generate notifications those strangers will see in hopes that they’ll get curious or want to reciprocate and so therefore follow you back. By triggering enough of this notification spam, they trick enough strangers to follow you to justify the monthly subscription fee.
That pissed me off. Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks send enough real notifications as is, growth hacking their way to more engagement, ad views, and daily user counts. But at least they have to weigh the risk of annoying you so much that you turn off notifications all together. Services that sell followers don’t care if they pollute Instagram and ruin your experience as long as they make money. They’re classic villains in the ‘tragedy of the commons’ of our attention.
This led me to start cataloging these spam company ads, and I was startled by how many different ones I saw. Soon, Instagram’s ad targeting and retargeting algorithms were backfiring, purposefully feeding me ads for similar companies that also violated Instagram’s policies.
The 17 services selling followers or spam that I originally indexed were Krends Marketing / GramGorilla, SocialUpgrade, MagicSocial, EZ-Grow, Xplod Social, Macurex, GoGrowthly, Instashop / IG Shops, TrendBee, JW Social Media Marketing, YR Charisma, Instagrocery, SocialSensational, SocialFuse, WeGrowSocial, IGWildfire, and GramFlare. TrendBee and GramFlare were found to still be running Instagram ads after the platform said they’ve been banned from doing so. Upon further investigation after Instagram’s supposed crackdown, I discovered five more services sell prohibited growth services: FireSocial, InstaMason/IWentMissing, NexStore2019, InstaGrow, and Servantify.
Knowingly Poisoning The Well
I wanted to find out if these companies were aware that they violate Instagram’s policies and how they justify generating spam. Most hide their contact info and merely provide a customer support email, but eventually I was able to get on the phone with some of the founders.
“What we’re doing is obviously against their terms of service” said GoGrowthly’s co-founder who refused to provide their name. “We’re going in and piggybacking off their free platform and not giving them any of the revenue. Instagram doesn’t like us at all. We utilize private proxies depending on clients’ geographic location. That’s sort of our trick to reduce any sort of liability” so clients’ accounts don’t get shut down, they said. “It’s a careful line that we tread with Instagram. Similar to SEO companies and Google, Google wants the best results for customers and customers want the best results for them. There’s a delicate dance” said Macurex founder Gun Hudson.
EZ-Grow’s co-founder Elon refused to give his last name on the record, but told me “[Clients] always need something new. At first it was follows and likes. Now we even watch Stories for them. Every new feature that Instagram has we take advantage of it to make more visibility for our clients.” He says EZ-Grow spends $500 per day on Instagram ads, which are its core strategy for finding new customers. SocialFuse founder Alexander Heit says his company spends a couple hundred dollars per day on Instagram and Facebook ads, and was worried when Instagram reiterated its ban on his kind of service in November, but says “We thought that we were definitely going to get shut down but nothing has changed on our end.”
Several of the founders tried to defend their notification spam services by saying that at least they weren’t selling fake followers. Lacking any self-awareness, Macurex’s Hudson said “If it’s done the wrong way it can ruin the user experience. There are all sorts of marketers who will market in untasteful or spammy ways. Instagram needs to keep a check on that.” GoGrowthly’s founder actually told me “We’re actually doing good for the community by generating those targeted interactions.” WeGrowSocial’s co-founder Brandon also refused to give his last name, but was willing to rat out his competitor SocialSensational for selling followers.
Only EZ-Grow’s Elon seemed to have a moment of clarity. “Because the targeting goes to the right people . . . and it’s something they would like, it’s not spam” he said before his epiphany. “People can also look at it as spam, maybe.”
Instagram Finally Shuts Down The Spammers
In response to our findings, an Instagram spokesperson provided this lengthy statement confirming it’s shut down the ads and accounts of the violators we discovered, claiming that it works hard to fight spam, and admitting it needs to do better:
“Nobody likes receiving spammy follows, likes and comments. It’s really important to us that the interactions people have on Instagram are genuine, and we’re working hard to keep the community free from spammy behavior. Services that offer to boost an account’s popularity via inauthentic likes, comments and followers, as well as ads that promote these services, aren’t allowed on Instagram. We’ve taken action on the services raised in this article, including removing violating ads, disabling Pages and accounts, and stopping Pages from placing further ads. We have various systems in place that help us catch and remove these types of ads before anyone sees them, but given the number of ads uploaded to our platform every day, there are times when some still manage to slip through. We know we have more to do in this area and we’re committed to improving.”
Instagram tells me it uses machine learning tools to identify accounts that pay third-party apps to boost their popularity and claims to remove inauthentic engagement before it reaches the recipient of the notifications. By nullifying the results of these services, Instagram believes users will have less incentive to use them. It uses automated systems to evaluate the images, captions, and landing pages of all its ads before they run, and sends some to human moderators. It claims this lets it catch most policy-violating ads, and that users can report those it misses.
But these ads and their associated accounts were filled with terms like “get followers”, “boost your Instagram followers”, “real followers”, “grow your engagement”, “get verified”, “engagement automation”, and other terms tightly linked to policy-violating services. That casts doubt on just how hard Instagram was working on this problem. It may have simply relied on cheap and scalable technical approaches to catching services with spam bots or fake accounts instead of properly screening ads or employing sufficient numbers of human moderators to police the network.
That misplaced dependence on AI and other tech solutions appears to be a trend in the industry. When I recently reported that child sexual abuse imagery was easy to find on WhatsApp and Microsoft Bing, both seemed to be understaffing the human moderation team that could have hunted down this illegal content with common sense where complex algorithms failed. As with Instagram, these products have highly profitable parent companies who can afford to pour more dollars in policy enforcement.
Kicking these services off Instagram is an important step, but the company must be more proactive. Social networks and self-serve ad networks have been treated as efficient cash cows for too long. The profits from these products should be reinvested in policing them. Otherwise, crooks will happily fleece users for our money and attention.
To learn more about the future of Instagram, check out this article’s author Josh Constine’s SXSW 2019 keynote with Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger — their first talk together since leaving the company.
Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it suggests it
WhatsApp has an encrypted child porn problem
from Mobile – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2FAZzsw
ORIGINAL CONTENT FROM: https://techcrunch.com/
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