Instagram announced on Thursday (13) that the social network will adopt new measures to inhibit the activity of bots or fraudulent profiles. From now on, the platform will identify accounts with “suspicious behavior” and request the sending of a scanned version of an official photo ID; if you refuse, the internet user will suffer a reduction in the reach of your posts and may even be blocked.
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The service guarantees that the new policies should not disturb normal users, but profiles that really demonstrate questionable characteristics and that appear to be involved in "coordinated inauthentic behaviors" – such as a large number of followers from another country other than yours or signs of automation.
Apparently, Instagram's primary goal is to reduce the incidence of misinformation and false news on the social network before the United States presidential elections. The policy follows rules similar to those adopted by Facebook, which already requires those responsible for operating pages with a large audience to conduct an identity check by sending an official document.
It is worth remembering that, in 2016, an investigative committee from Russia categorized Instagram as “the most effective tool used by the Irish Republican Army to conduct its information operations campaign”, accusing the app of serving as a stage for the dissemination of disinformation through bots.