Influencer Law Firm, a division of Heitner Legal, is your one-stop shop for all legal services related to social media influencers, including but not limited to trademarking, copyrighting, contract drafting and negotiation, and compliance with advertising laws. Contact us with any questions.
Have you heard of Instagram pods? These are groups of Instagram users, organized by industry, location or otherwise, with the goal of gaming the Instagram algorithm and boosting pod members’ posts through promised likes and engagement.
These Instagram pods tend to generate strong results for members. Researchers from the New York University Tandon School of Engineering and Drexel University found that Instagram pod activitiy is highly effective at raising the visibility of posts and increasing real, organic engagement.
Here were some of the specific findings:
- 70% of users experienced at least a 2x increase in interaction on posts and a 5x increase in comments after they started posting in pods.
- When a user went from not posting in pods to submitting their posts in pods, they experienced more than a 5x increase in organic interaction with posts that were not posted in pods (interesting side effect).
- Most pods average around 900 users, with some as large as 17,000 users.
- Only 4% of pods have a minimum follower count requirement before joining.
- The more active pods have more than 4,000 messages per day among members.
The unique feature of pods is that there are no bots or scripts created to game the system. The positive results for participants comes simply through organized human interaction, which makes them harder to detect.
But are Instagram pods legal?
The practice of individuals within an Instagram pod liking members’ posts has an interesting name. It is referred to as “reciprocity abuse.” The use of “abuse” should make one wonder whether there is any risk in engaging in this type of activity. Is it abuse that could rise to the level of violating Instagram’s Terms of Use, Community Guidelines or Platform Policy?
The Terms of Use intentionally includes overbroad language that could allow Instagram to suspend or deactivate an account for engaging in Instagram pod activity. Such language includes, “You can’t do anything to interfere with or impair the intended operation of the Service.” Instagram could take the position that organizing into pods and manufacturing likes/engagement interferes with and impairs the intended operation of Instagram as a service.
Additionally, Instagram’s Community Guidelines includes a section that says overstepping boundaries may result in deleted content, disabled accounts or other restrictions. In that section, Instagram makes it clear that it is interested in fostering meaningful and genuine interactions and states a mission of prohibiting “artificially collecting likes, followers, or shares, posting repetitive comments or content, or repeatedly contacting people for commercial purposes without their consent.”
Instagram has recently stated that engaging in this type of pod activity violates its policies, adding that “we have numerous measures in place to stop it.” Yet, it does not seem as though Instagram has either been proactive in destroying these pod setups and/or been effective in monitoring these artificial campaigns.
If you have any further questions about the legality of Instagram pods or anything else related to social media, please feel free to contact us.