Instagram – Credit Where it is Due

I am not big on social media. I have a couple twitter accounts (of which, my tagline is “consumer of tweets” – I read there but don’t engage. I don’t like the platform). I do have Facebook which chronicles my life in positive facing, bite sized pieces. I tried Snapchat for oh, a week – and still get ‘snaps’ from some people and rounding out all of that is my Instagram account, of which, I have very little of myself in there but a lot of what I look at. I have different opinions about all of the platforms and the two I like the most are IG and FB.

Facebook is easy, because I wish my grandpa (and his grandpa) had Facebook so I could go back and look at the amazing things they did in their lives. While you get told a lot of these stories as kids, seeing and living them would be so much better. It is kind of a diary of your life.

Instagram I like because I am a visual person. I find recipes there, get workout tips, etc. etc. Now, I don’t know the rules of Instagram but I always did some simple things, such as follow for follow. If someone follows me, I follow them back. I held true on this except in two regards – clear spam only accounts, and porn accounts. At first I was shocked at the number of naked Russian women that wanted to follow me on Instagram. They don’t get the follow back. I even started reporting these accounts to Instagram, an annoying process due to the frequency of them and after a while I just stopped to bother reporting – firstly, because they need to find a better way to stop these accounts to begin with (sheer volume of them indicate the seriousness of the problem) and secondly, like most companies, they don’t tell you the results of the notification.

Until now. And let me tell you, HALLELUJIAH!

Instagram is now my most favourite social media platform. I am tired of the excuses by Blizzard and other big companies when I report people for harassment, racism, cheating (etc.) that they hide behind the veil that they can’t share the action on the account. Of course they can. And they should. Every time. They just don’t want to because they don’t want to cut off their revenue streams. It is inconvenient when some of your big spenders may also happen to be harassers, racists and homophobes, and who take joy in ruining the experience of others through non-gaming methods.  I know it is expensive to build a stronger community in terms of technology and manpower but it is worth it. Invest in good people playing your game.

I had stopped reporting to IG because there was no feedback, and now that there is, you can bet I will more often and with great enthusiasm. I will help ensure spam and illegal accounts don’t exist. I will do it frequently. I will do it for free. It is a wonderful win/win.

I think MMO (especially) and gaming companies should take a page out of this book and start sharing when they get rid of community detractors. We need to make common decency commonplace in our virtual worlds. That happens by clearly demonstrating acceptable behavior in words and actions. Currently, most just share the words part.

Side note – If you have Instagram you also need the ‘Unfollowers’ app.  It tells you when people un-follow you. This is particularly useful for the “follow for follow” crowd. People do this to get their numbers up and then unfollow you a few days later. You have no clue who does that, but that app is completely free and helps you keep track of those sorts of things.

2 comments / Add your comment below

  1. While I’m not an Instagram user, I think this is fantastic! I’m with you. I wish I had more feedback on spammers and pornbots I report on social media. I don’t see how these fake accounts are doing anyone any good.

  2. Most of my social media I only have to see pictures of my nephews. Twitter I use for work and you can clearly notice how when I sit down to bang out some reviews, I’ll be active on Twitter for those 8 hours. and then I disappear. Stay disappeared over whole weekends. I only Tweet constantly when I’m at a film festival. I just can’t be bothered.

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