Instapy: Instagram Massive ban accounts

[CamiloB]

Expected Behavior

I'm using instapy like a 1 year ago in my personal account suddenly yesterday i try to log in and instagram said that doesn't exist then i try to see the on webpage the same error looks like it was tottaly deleted, instagram never send me and email or something, i run this on Dalas Server, i use this to help some friends and i stop all the bots being afraid of thei get deleted accounts i want to know if it was InstaPy so i give you here mi configuration file

Current Behavior

works normal

Possible Solution (optional)

i dont know what to do

## InstaPy configuration
from instapy import InstaPy
from instapy import Settings
import schedule
import sqlite3
import time
defaultComments=[u"Super tu foto :thumbsup:", 
                u"Saludos",
                u"Que buena foto", 
                u"Ten un buen dia",
                u"Cool :thumbsup:",
                u":+1: :+1: :+1: :+1:",
                u":clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:",
                u"super!!",
                u"Feliz dia :v:",
                u":cool:",
                u"Excelente :sunglasses:",
                u":ok_hand: :ok_hand: :ok_hand:",
                u"Muy buen dia para vos",
                u"Es una buena foto :ok_hand:",
                u"Con entusiasmo todo es posible",
                u"El dia puede ser bueno o malo, es tu decision :v:",
                u"Ten una excelente semana :punch:",
                u"Cada dia es una nueva oportunidad :point_up:",
                u"Omite lo malo, potencia lo bueno :top: :top:",
                u"Lo bueno ocurre cuando piensas positivo :punch:",
                u"super!!",
                ]

class InstaBot:
    def __init__(self,user,password,hashtags,rivals,howToUnfollow,listOfComments=defaultComments):
        self.user=user
        self.password=password
        self.hashtags=hashtags
        self.rivals=rivals
        self.howToUnfollow=howToUnfollow
        self.listOfComments=listOfComments
        pass
    def like(self):
        try:
        # set these if you're locating the library in the /usr/lib/pythonX.X/ direc$
        # Settings.database_location = '/var/www/html/tabu/tabu.db'
        # Settings.browser_location = '/path/to/chromedriver'
            session = InstaPy(username=self.user,
                        password=self.password,
                        headless_browser=True,
                        bypass_suspicious_attempt=False,
                        multi_logs=True)
            session.login()


        # actions
            session.set_relationship_bounds(enabled=True,
                                 potency_ratio=1.34,
                                  delimit_by_numbers=True,
                                   max_followers=8500,
                                    max_following=4490,
                                     min_followers=100,
                                      min_following=56)
            session.set_user_interact(amount=2, randomize=True, percentage=50,
                              media='Photo')
            session.set_do_follow(enabled=True, percentage=70)
            session.set_do_like(enabled=True, percentage=70)
            session.set_comments(self.listOfComments)
            session.set_do_comment(enabled=True, percentage=10)

        #session.like_by_tags(['lipoblue','gym','crossfit'], amount=150)
            #session.set_smart_hashtags(self.hashtags, limit=8, sort='top', log_tags=True)
            session.like_by_tags(self.hashtags, amount=100)
        except:
            import traceback
            print(traceback.format_exc())
        finally:
        # end the bot session
            session.end()
    def job(self):
        # set headless_browser=True if you want to run InstaPy on a server
        try:
        # set these if you're locating the library in the /usr/lib/pythonX.X/ direc$
        # Settings.database_location = '/var/www/html/tabu/tabu.db'
        # Settings.browser_location = '/path/to/chromedriver'
            session = InstaPy(username=self.user,
                      password=self.password,
                      headless_browser=True,
                      bypass_suspicious_attempt=False,
                      multi_logs=True)
            session.login()
        # settings
            session.set_relationship_bounds(enabled=True,
                                 potency_ratio=1.34,
                                  delimit_by_numbers=True,
                                   max_followers=8500,
                                    max_following=4490,
                                     min_followers=100,
                                      min_following=56)
            session.set_user_interact(amount=2, randomize=True, percentage=50,
                              media='Photo')
            session.set_do_follow(enabled=True, percentage=70)
            session.set_do_like(enabled=True, percentage=70)
            session.set_comments(self.listOfComments)
            session.set_do_comment(enabled=True, percentage=10)
            session.interact_user_followers(self.rivals, amount=100,
                                    randomize=True)
        except:
            import traceback
            print(traceback.format_exc())
        finally:
            # end the bot session
            session.end()
    def unfollow(self):
        # set headless_browser=True if you want to run InstaPy on a server
        try:
        # set these if you're locating the library in the /usr/lib/pythonX.X/ direc$
        # Settings.database_location = '/var/www/html/tabu/tabu.db'
        # Settings.browser_location = '/path/to/chromedriver'
            session = InstaPy(username=self.user,
                      password=self.password,
                      headless_browser=True,
                      bypass_suspicious_attempt=False,
                      multi_logs=True)
            session.login()
        # settings
            session.set_user_interact(amount=2, randomize=True, percentage=50,
                              media='Photo')
            session.set_do_follow(enabled=False, percentage=70)
            session.set_do_like(enabled=False, percentage=70)
            session.set_do_comment(enabled=True, percentage=10)
        #Unfollow
            session.unfollow_users(amount=150, nonFollowers=True, style="RANDOM", unfollow_after=42*60*60, sleep_delay=655)
        except:
            import traceback
            print(traceback.format_exc())
        finally:
            # end the bot session
            session.end()

[octavius-1]

Were you using a proxy?
If your account is running in a datacenter with a datacenter IP it is more likely to get banned (or even deleted)
I'm facing some issues since yesterday too, apparently instagram is now detecting headless browsers (or at least firefox). I already checked my proxy provider functionality and it works perfectly while using a regular browser.
My issue shows the "Phew! Last follow is not verified" message and the likes it says it performs, are not showing up while browsing the app.
I already sent a mail to you in case that you want to talk this privately.

[ccanete]

@octavius-1 do you have more information ? I also have issue with Instagram since yesterday. They are blocking my actions when they use not to.

[octavius-1]

@ccanete What information do you need? My investigation of those actions? I haven't been able to track what's happening, I'll update this thread as soon as I can conclude something useful.

[ccanete]

@octavius-1 that would be very appreciated! I'm running also investigation on my side. One hypothesis I had is that Instagram changed the way they calculate actions limits. But I did not consider the fact that they detect the headless versions. I'll try to change the user agent to see if it changes something.

[octavius-1]

I don't think the actions limit is an issue here because the "ban" is just happening inside the server (with its proxy enabled) and not in the account itself (like it used to happen before).
I have a dummy account running right now for a more specific tracking of these actions, let's wait and see.

[CamiloB]

Hi guys, @octavius-1 ill send you the email whit all the info that you ask, but i want to tell you that today ill try to search my instagram account and its there idon't know what happend,


those photos are from yesterday

today the account its seem normal

[octavius-1]

@CamiloB Maybe a warning from instagram? Something like "We know what you're doing and here's what we can do".
Did you notice something different in instapy logs?

[CamiloB]

@octavius-1 no nothing, just disappear and then appear from no where, instagram not send me any email, don't have any notification when i login into the app, yes the logs that i have ist that the last follow does not verify, like you the only thing that works normally its the unfollow method

[nbgabriel]

Today i've recieved a notification from Instagram, saying something like "looks like you are using and third app to put likes and follows, we are going to delete all that actions, please change your password". So i believe that we should limit more our actions with instapy.

This is my config:
session.set_delimit_liking(enabled=True, max=30, min=0)
session.set_delimit_commenting(enabled=True, max=10, min=0)
session.set_action_delays(enabled=True,like=30,comment=30,follow=60)
session.set_do_like(enabled=True, percentage=100)
session.set_do_comment(enabled=True, percentage=30)
session.set_do_follow(enabled=True, percentage=100, times=1)
session.follow_user_followers(targets, amount=3000, randomize=False, interact=True)
session.join_pods()

Edit: Im using instapy in my laptop, no proxy, no headless.

[octavius-1]

@nbgabriel
Do you use Quota supervisor?
Do you handle times after every action?
Do you have random sleeps inside your actions?
It looks like you’re just massively using the tool

Edit: I see that you’re using delays but I think that’s not enough, does your config sleep at night? Can you post the message that Instagram sent? (Hide your personal info if you choose to)

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[nbgabriel]

"It looks like you’re just massively using the tool"

Yes...... i know :(. I was only using the actions delays. Now i will take a break, and then set the quota supervisor.

[CamiloB]

ill do the same look like i was using this to massive, thanks a lot @octavius-1

[hw711]

I felt like instagram definitely implemented some new follow action limit with their new update. All my accounts (like a dozen) got follow ban yesterday. :(

[octavius-1]

@hw711 Yes they did, same happened here. In two of my accounts I got follow ban for unfollowing too many people manually (yes, its weird but it happened that way)

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[ccanete]

@octavius-1 @hw711 if you find a way not to be ban, please let me know 🙏
I'm suspecting Instagram not only to monitor number of actions but also automation pattern.
I have not correlation between the number of accounts followed per hour or day and the moment I get banned. Also, all bans seem to occur pretty much at the same time on all accounts.

[hw711]

Probably just need to wait it out.
Now you mentioned it, I rechecked my logs.  All my accounts (running across 5 different azure virtual machines) got banned around 6/4 11:19AM CST.  Very strange.
If they start looking for automation patterns, I will probably write some code to do random small patches of rotating follow/unfollow (maybe mix in some likes) throughout the day instead of my current big batch 500-600 follow then unfollow.

[Herrox]

Hey guys,
It looks likes we all have been banned from following new user on the previous days. I was banned since yesterday and compared to like ban, there is no delay on how long this ban will be.

By the way, I don't know if it is related or not but I move the configuration from 'classic browser' to 'headless_brower' and since then I have been ban 2 or 3 times since then. One or two "liking ban" and one "following ban". I guess it's easier for their algorithm to detect headless_brower and maybe we need to move back to classic browser or change the User-Agent.

Anyway, let's see what will come in the next days about this massive following ban.

[hw711]

I have never used headless mode. I don't even minimize the browser because I don't think instapy gets all the commenters/likers when browser is minimized.

[hw711]

The new instagram update is really buggy too. One of my account's follower count kept on fluctuating between 4 and the correct number and graphql only returns 4.

[cbyrt01]

Got banned from following too

[socialsplice]

Same here. Any updates?

[octavius-1]

@ccanete @hw711 My scripts have random delays after every action and also after every group of actions. Also I just perform a small amount of actions and then jump to another ones. Even with all of that security I've been building, the follow blocking still happened while using a graphic browser (non-headless) using my home internet.

@hw711 I've seen that bug too. One of the accounts I handle has been fluctuating from 0 to 1 followers.

And yes guys, our theories are correct, instagram is hunting us harder than ever. What we need to know is if they're hunting action numbers, browsing style (headless or not) or IPs. BTW, my theory is that they're hunting all of them at once.

If any of you has any idea of how to solve, improve or debug this, I'm open to suggestions.

[leaopedro]

Here it shows the "Phew!" message when on headless browser, but it works when I use classic browser. I believe they are developing some way of detecting automations, and probably headless browsers trigger a red flag there.

[octavius-1]

@leaopedro Yes, we all started noticing that first last week, it won't take long until you start receiving the follow block notification.

Do any of you guys use headless chrome?

My IP ban for follows was achieved by running headless firefox with proxy on AWS.

My follow block ban was achieved by running regular chrome with residential network in a raspberry.

[leaopedro]

Hi @octavius-1, I use Chrome Driver

[octavius-1]

Okay, so no one is immune to this new massive hunting Instagram is performing, even the accounts that run on residential with an opened explorer window are being caught.

Any ideas, guys?

[Herrox]

Yeah I think headless browser may not not as good as a real browser. The closer we stick to any human being (with a real web browser), the better it is but like @octavius-1 said the banning algorithm have hundreds of parameters

[octavius-1]

@Herrox Yes, I used to think that the headless browsers were the triggering scenario, until yesterday, when my personal account running in a real browser in a real residential network, got follow blocked. Also, my quota supervisor is low with high delay times, I'll attach my config:
likes: 30,400; follows: 40, 600; unfollows: 45, 700.
sleep after: server_calls, follows_h, unfollows_h
delays: like:15, follow:60, unfollow:25, random_range:80,150

[nbgabriel]

Days ago, i put instapt on ONE account, with chrome without headless. Without proxy, a delay ramdom of 100s, Follow 3 people, And bang.... Blocked!! 3 people! Why instagram, why!? ¿?!!!

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[CamiloB]

Hi guys i always use headless chrome browser, yesterday i put one bot on my ibm cloud machine and one on my local machine using ubuntu 14.0.6, on my ibm machine i got the error of following phew the last error was not verified, on this machine im not use quota supervisor, so i got that log 2019-06-05 12:29:33 was on that time Dalas U.S time, on my local internet use i got this new message, last follow was verified after loading the page!! y got this error 2019-06-05 09:39:40 Colombia date Time, in none of them im using proxies, this is my last update.
I was doing a little search about this instagram change and found this New limits i don't know if this is true but i put this limits on my quota supervisor and got that new warning

[socialsplice]

My delay is at 800.. Even then they blocked my actions.

[socialsplice]

I stopped all my servers to make sure that my people are not getting banned until this is solved.. I think they are doing this for a certain amount of time and then they will stop hunting.. Just like the moments when they are hunting for ghost followers. Going to lay low with my accounts for the next couple of days haha.

[alexowson]

Unfollow action is working fine. So, I put to only work about this action 😝

[sionking]

I keep watching this thread.
I have only 6 users in instapy (not-headless) 4g proxys, it seems they are not blocked, but it is modified version, with some implemented sec, not sure if it tell anything since 50% of users running in Jarvee are blocked. and some of you did tell that:
"My follow block ban was achieved by running regular chrome with residential network in a raspberry."
I want to know if my modified version will be more resistant but I am not sure yet.

[octavius-1]

@sionking I also run a modified version with a lot of delays constantly changing to avoid looking like a robot. It also goes to sleep and wakes up at different times daily. What does your modified version do?

Could you please tell us what's happening with Jarvee users? Maybe we're not aware of that.

[octavius-1]

Guys, take a look of this external threads (jarvee related):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftZKk72OF64

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/follow-block-megathread-for-6-4-19.1126241/

[CamiloB]

lets see if @timgrossmann had the same issue and is aware of this

[socialsplice]

@timgrossmann ...

[sionking]

@Herrox Yes, I used to think that the headless browsers were the triggering scenario, until yesterday, when my personal account running in a real browser in a real residential network, got follow blocked. Also, my quota supervisor is low with high delay times, I'll attach my config:

is it only one user on this IP ?

BTW, security patches I have are more than jsut delays. more flags and fingerprints that I mask.

[Herrox]

@socialsplice I don't think Tim has more information that we have, he don't (yet ? :D) work for Instagram and there is plenty of others people like us all around internet.

@sionking Ok, it's too early to know how it will ends up and how to manage this for the future but maybe we will have to rewrite how InstaPy interact like instead of scrapping accounts and then going to the direct link, going to search button, tapping letters of the accounts, clicking on it... Like a real human being does. Especially with all the AI/ML technologies poping

[nbgabriel]

I try instabot (NOT instapy) and i followed several users, give a lot of likes, and my account its ok. Instapy put some header or some identification ? something that instagram can see and say "ok, this is a robot, not an user" ?!?!?. Have no sense if with another script works, but with instapy i follow 3 users and get blocked. No logic at all.

[octavius-1]

@nbgabriel How does the instabot backend work? That could help us debugging

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[Herrox]

@nbgabriel @octavius-1 Great to hear that but there is some others bot that have been banned, some that don't. I read some Jarvee users have some account banned and some don't. Like Sionking said.

I don't think it's entirely related to InstaPy, but it's clearly something bigger than InstaPy, just have a look online

[hw711]

definitely not just instapy. I have been reading comments on down detector https://downdetector.com/status/instagram
it seems to affect some people who don't use automation as well. Maybe IG released a buggy update even?

[awesome205]

I've been doing the exact same thing with InstaPy and it just started getting follower blocked, sometime around last week. Then, I used a proxy and created a completely new Instagram account (with varying delays from 850 to 1000) to be safe, and Instagram banned the account within one week.

I've been doing some research, and Instagram just released a new algorithm on June 4th. They must have had a change in their background code for detecting accounts that are automatically following, but from this thread, we've learned that - it's not by varied delays, not from using headless, not from using proxies - either this is just a messed up update from Instagram, or they are cracking down on all automation services.

This probably is a buggy update if many others are also having this problem.

[octavius-1]

@awesome205 I support that. Either buggy update or massive witch hunt.

[dbmathis]

Banned for following here too.

[dbmathis]

I halted the Instapy script.

[steffanjensen]

It's a bot detection which use machine learning.

[sionking]

I still have 5 instapy bots active with no follow block but with security patches.
Still not sure if it small number too small to know (5).

[nbgabriel]

I still have 5 instapy bots active with no follow block but with security patches. ...

@sionking sorry, but, what do you mean with "Security parches"? In the browser you say? Thanks

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[alexowson]

I still have 5 instapy bots active with no follow block but with security patches. ...

@sionking Tell us about patches please 🙂

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[dmfaria]

Any solution to this problem?

@sionking How many actions your bots are doing per day?

People that didn't get blocked, can you tell us your quota supervisor settings? and how many actions per day you were doing?

[dunky11]

I actually switched from a private API to using your bot and I can assure, that this repo still works much better. There are some articles about sniffing headless chrome via javascript
https://antoinevastel.com/bot%20detection/2018/01/17/detect-chrome-headless-v2.html
but I couldn't find any parameters send to Instagram regarding that in the browsers requests.

[newcodemarc]

Same problem here since Tuesday 4. June. Got blocked from following actions.
Everything else works fine. Was running for quite a while without any problems and a lot of random action delays on headless chrome.
Puh lets hope for another update of Instagram or let's find a smart solution for that :D

[dmfaria]

I've just watched this video about the block: https://youtu.be/ETIlr1oA4z0

One of the theories is that Instagram is now counting the follows in the last 30 days.

My bot followed about 4400 accounts and manually I followed about 600 in the last 30 days. So about 5000 follows in total. Maybe 5000 is the threshold.

Can you write down your numbers?

[hw711]

I've just watched this video about the block: https://youtu.be/ETIlr1oA4z0

One of the theories is that Instagram is now counting the follows in the last 30 days.

My bot followed about 4400 accounts and manually I followed about 600 in the last 30 days. So about 5000 follows in total. Maybe 5000 is the threshold.

Can you write down your numbers?

I doubt that's the case since all my 13 accounts (across 5 VMs) got banned around the same time (within minutes) unless it's not a "as soon as you go over the monthly limit" ban but they do a periodic sweep to ban whoever is over the limit. Of those 13 accounts, their past month total follow # ranged from 15K-18k each

[steffanjensen]

I got many new accounts banned there had not done more than 50 requests from bot's daily. So even if the requests is extremely low, they still ban. You should stop focusing on the "many" requests limits because that is not where the fix is.

They are using machine learning to detect bots now. So without using machine learning or something there looks like human behavior, we can't win this.. There is no "one" fix for this patch.

[hw711]

According to instagram down detector page, some of the people are reporting they are getting followed banned and they don't use any automation at all, so I'm going to assume their new "machine learning" bot catching system is pretty buggy and/or overzealous. If there are enough false positives and enough people complain, they will have to roll back the sensitivity level.

[dbmathis]

Seems like Instagram is broken. I will wait it out for a few weeks.

[octavius-1]

@hw711 Yes, some blocked accounts didn't use automation at all but they played the follow & unfollow later game too. So my guess is that they're tracking that scenario, not the single actions themselves.

As @reliefs said, their machine learning banhammer is working better than ever and we, the ones that automate actions, are being caught.

[steffanjensen]

I did not use the follow and unfollow functions, i only used the repost/dm functions with 1-3 hours delay.. and still got blocked for following users, so it has nothing to do with that either..

[CharlesCCC]

@CamiloB You might want to edit the original post as your account didn't get "deleted" it was false positive. Because the title will be really scare people away. (TBH, I have seem quite some people get blocked/banned due to crazy setting, but not a single user get deleted with Using InstaPy)

@sionking Good to see you pal.

[octavius-1]

I did not use the follow and unfollow functions, i only used the repost/dm functions with 1-3 hours delay.. and still got blocked for following users, so it has nothing to do with that either..

@reliefs So their machine learning banhammer goes beyond the follow unfollow action. Any ideas?

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[ZKing1000]

Same problem. I'm using the follow_user_following() function with a delay of 30 minutes between a list of at least 20 accounts. Now I've seemed to be blocked indefinitely. I'm only automating this because I was blocked when trying to perform this same action manually.... Using a remote linode server, headless. Horrible.

My other less legit seeming account, isn't having any problems doing the same thing cycling between 2 accounts.

[steffanjensen]

I did not use the follow and unfollow functions, i only used the repost/dm functions with 1-3 hours delay.. and still got blocked for following users, so it has nothing to do with that either..

@reliefs So their machine learning banhammer goes beyond the follow unfollow action. Any ideas?

Sent with GitHawk

I got 2-3 accounts banned yesterday, i am a main dev myself on a famous instagram bot.

They released a new machine learning system Wednesday for banning and blocking people and it's working.
They always give the same error "You have been blocked because you made too many likes", but that does not mean that likes was the variable that got you blocked. Here is variable i have seen which get's the account deleted (if account is less than 3-6 months old) and get action blocked if it's older than 6 months old.

• Likes
• Comments
• Change phonenumber 2 times in one day. (Verified numbers)
• Login from a few different proxies 2-3.
• View stories.
• Send DM but not answering DM's

Everything above 50 actions on new accounts seem to make it "banned", but the fun part is, the system is so good that to make the test is almost impossible.

I even got an account banned there had never seen a bot in it's life just because i changed the phone number 2 times, i verified both numbers.

I am the creator of instabotai, so i am not just some newbie which suspect stuff, i have read articles and talked to many users about the new machine learning ban system.

[steffanjensen]

@CamiloB You might want to edit the original post as your account didn't get "deleted" it was false positive. Because the title will be really scare people away. (TBH, I have seem quite some people get blocked/banned due to crazy setting, but not a single user get deleted with Using InstaPy)

@sionking Good to see you pal.

You are wrong buddy, instagram released a new machine learning banning system 3 days ago.

[ZKing1000]

Why not develop InstaPy Machine Learning Version in response? Lol, sometimes you need to fight fire with fire... 🔥

[steffanjensen]

Why not develop InstaPy Machine Learning Version in response? Lol, sometimes you need to fight fire with fire... fire

I started to develop this tool 3 months ago, i knew this was going to happen.
https://github.com/instagrambot/instabotai/

Instagram started to talk about it last year, that they where building this ban tool.

[ZKing1000]

@reliefs Oh, I see. Didn't completely I understand; was thinking more along the lines of a system that analysed Instagram ML behavior and counteracted/evaded. That looks really interesting, definitely going to check it out.

Edit: Kinda like evolution, neurological system evolution under competition.

@hw771 That and blocking are exactly how data would be collected under that system, other than that there are activity patterns that earn credibility to be analysed, which is think is the direction @reliefs is going.

I'm not implying that is a practical or realistic idea; Feasible because parallels already exists in nature.

[hw711]

Because you can’t learn anything when you are banned from testing further 😂

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 8, 2019, at 09:16, Holden Green [e-mail] wrote:

Why not release InstaPy ML Version in response? Lol, sometimes you need to fight fire with fire... 🔥

—
You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[ZKing1000]

@hw711 The job of Instagram's AI is to distinguish between human and bot. The only way to combat that is to develop a bot that is indistinguishable from human, or better yet recognise Instagram's AI as an intelligent entity and to outsmart it. We can't directly hit it, but apparently it's already shitty enough to ban/block normal non-bot users. So how hard can this battle be to win?

Yeah actually if you look at it from that perspective this ML bullshit from Instagram is doomed from the start. The worst they can do is ban a bot account; So freaking what? On the other hand if their ML is tricked and driven to mess up then the platform becomes increasingly unusable. They're banking on the expectation that you people are going to just sit and cry it looks like, seems stupid to me.

[hw711]

I don’t think it’s hard to write better programs than their programmers can. The problem is it’s not just about who can write better code. The difficulty is instagram set the rules for their platform, they can ban us whenever they want, not vice versa. Their AI can do almost unlimited # trial and error (data collection of 1 billion accounts’ behavior) to learn ways to find characteristics of accounts matching bots. Whatever we build can only do very limited number of trial and error to learn how to avoid detection before ban hammer come down on our accounts. That’s the huge disadvantage we have.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 8, 2019, at 10:28, Holden Green [e-mail] wrote:

@hw711 The job of Instagram's AI is to distinguish between human and bot. The only way to combat that is to develop a bot that is indistinguishable from human, or better yet recognise Instagram's AI as an intelligent entity and to outsmart it. We can't directly hit it, but apparently it's already shitty enough to ban/block normal non-bot users. So how hard can this battle be to win?

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[dbmathis]

I will come back here once the Instagram bug is fixed and laugh at all of the machine learning comments.

[hw711]

I will come back here once the Instagram bug is fixed and laugh at all of the machine learning comments.

If I have to put my money on it, I'm leaning more toward they rolled out a buggy update than they built some bot detecting AI. I was just pointing out there is no reason to play battle bot with IG, it's either 1) not necessary because they don't anything close to having any intelligent as they claim or 2) for the small chance they do (which I doubt), it will have huge home field advantage.

[steffanjensen]

I will come back here once the Instagram bug is fixed and laugh at all of the machine learning comments.

Here are some articles about proff they rolled out this new protection:
https://spamguardapp.com/blog/post/instagram-fights-false-activity-bots-cheating-and-fake-profiles
"Back in mid-November 2018, Instagram creators said they were launching an active campaign to combat fake accounts. Based on machine learning were created special tools. They will find profiles that use cheating services for promotion. Firstly, the account owner will receive a warning. After that, he is strongly advised to change the password. As a result, special services will be useless over time and will be forced to massively close. First of all, let's see what the developers said in their official message."

https://www.technadu.com/instagram-remove-fake-followers-machine-learning/48300/

https://www.wired.com/story/instagrams-crackdown-fake-followers-might-work/

https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2018/11/20/instagram-is-using-machine-learning-to-kill-off-your-fake-followers/

https://medium.com/@WolfMillionaire/instagram-deletes-fake-followers-likes-comments-botting-d7be07ecbf7c

https://fstoppers.com/news/instagram-culling-fake-accounts-using-new-machine-learning-tools-310201

All articles are less than 7 months old.

Instagram press release
https://instagram-press.com/blog/2018/11/19/reducing-inauthentic-activity-on-instagram/
"Since the early days of Instagram, we have auto-detected and removed fake accounts to protect our community. Today’s update is just another step in keeping Instagram a vibrant community where people connect and share in authentic ways. We’ll have more updates in the coming weeks on additional measures we’re taking to tackle inauthentic activity on Instagram."

[hw711]

Did anyone get any email warnings?

[steffanjensen]

Did anyone get any email warnings?

no.. 3 accounts banned no email warnings..

[spikeyhair]

Instagram soft-ban me from following a few days ago, I even tried to stopped the bot for few days but it's still banned. I have been using the bot for a year and never get following-ban. All these while only got soft-ban on comment and like. Now this is something new to me.

Maybe instagram has changed their algorithm to detect bots again? Or tighten their policy.
Really don't know when will get unbanned.

[AKwoKWH]

when you guys said "ban", what does it mean?

I get like and follow ban for all of my account around 2Jun.
2 days later, all my 9 accounts got "ban" too.

For the "ban" I mentioned here:
They didnt delete my account but they hide my account profile from discovery.
Also, I receive a challenge feedback to ask me to provide a phone number.
However, the msg was never able to deliver to my phone.
Thus I am not able to login.

I tried to input a new phone number.
It works for 2 of 9 accounts, that I can receive the msg and then login the the account.
(doesn't it mean 1 phone number can only be linked into max 2 accounts?)

FYI,
I am using google VM with US proxy.
while I am living in HK
(not sure if this will trigger instagram monitoring too? as the accounts are logged-in in US and HK at the same time)

[steffanjensen]

when you guys said "ban", what does it mean?

I get like and follow ban for all of my account around 2Jun.
2 days later, all my 9 accounts got "ban" too.

For the "ban" I mentioned here:
They didnt delete my account but they hide my account profile from discovery.
Also, I receive a challenge feedback to ask me to provide a phone number.
However, the msg was never able to deliver to my phone.
Thus I am not able to login.

I tried to input a new phone number.
It works for 2 of 9 accounts, that I can receive the msg and then login the the account.
(doesn't it mean 1 phone number can only be linked into max 2 accounts?)

FYI,
I am using google VM with US proxy.
while I am living in HK
(not sure if this will trigger instagram monitoring too? as the accounts are logged-in in US and HK at the same time)

I have also seen the same behavior as you. Also with the phonenumbers and no message received until i changed it..

[hw711]

I am using google VM with US proxy.
while I am living in HK
(not sure if this will trigger instagram monitoring too? as the accounts are logged-in in US and HK at the same time)

I kind of doubt that will trigger any flag (unless their detection is really really poorly designed of course). Any decent size business account (aka IG's bread and butter) may have a good chance of being accessible by multiple people within the company and if the company is global, there could be simultaneous logins to the account from multiple locations around the world.

[AKwoKWH]

Also, I receive a challenge feedback to ask me to provide a phone number.
However, the msg was never able to deliver to my phone.
Thus I am not able to login.

I tried to input a new phone number.
It works for 2 of 9 accounts, that I can receive the msg and then login the the account.
(doesn't it mean 1 phone number can only be linked into max 2 accounts?)

an update:
I just check my accounts.
for the 2 accounts that I inputted a new phone number and logged-in successfully.

They are now being "banned" again,
I receive challenge and ask me to input the phone number again.
and this time, I receive no sms message.

(I use a UK number for that 2 accounts)

[hw711]

So I think I just noticed something. The follow block may only applies following accounts you never followed before. I tried to follow a couple accounts I have followed/unfollowed before and I'm not blocked from doing so. So time to retry some old unsuccessful follow/unfollows and see if I will have better luck while waiting for the block to expire/be fixed? I usually only wait 36 hours before unfollowing but having everything stopped for 3 days, I finally realized some people take a couple days to follow back. lol

[hw711]

So I think I just noticed something. The follow block may only applies following accounts you never followed before. I tried to follow a couple accounts I have followed/unfollowed before and I'm not blocked from doing so. So time to retry some old unsuccessful follow/unfollows and see if I will have better luck while waiting for the block to expire/be fixed? I usually only wait 36 hours before unfollowing but having everything stopped for 3 days, I finally realized some people take a couple days to follow back. lol

Nevermind. still blocked. not sure how I successfully followed a couple with no block then.

[steffanjensen]

one more account just got banned (y)

[newcodemarc]

I also had the phone number thing twice in the last 4 weeks.
I thought it might be connected to logins from different locations due to my use of many different locations for vpn servers. But I guess this might be caused by changes within Instagram.

Also, pictures on the account weren't showing up in my own #search. Means when you looked for the # I use for the profile it says there are x amount of pictures but then just showed one.

[DoJoMast3r]

Just wondering if the bot is even worth running right now? Is it just follow/unfollow that risks accounts or is everyone at risk right now? Is it safe to let the bot like posts by hashtag right now? Or should I wait until things cool down.

Also is anyone actively working on a machine learning bot? Kenji is a bot that apparently uses machine learning but it would be great if we had an open sourced alternative, especially due to these recent bans. It might be the only way to properly prevent account bans, or atleast mitigate it.

[mikediachenko]

Just wondering if the bot is even worth running right now? Is it just follow/unfollow that risks accounts or is everyone at risk right now? Is it safe to let the bot like posts by hashtag right now? Or should I wait until things cool down. ...

@DoJoMast3r Good question on likes by hashtag. I am really interested too, because I have stopped all bot activity at the moment.

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[octavius-1]

I also stopped everything. I don't know when is it worth to enable it back or which actions should I choose now.

[DoJoMast3r]

Im curious how other bots are handing this ban wave, does anyone use instabot.py? If so are the bans just as common on instapy?

Update: seams instabot.py is experiencing the same thing.
"Be careful mate! I used the bot for two months and no problems, but this week, instagram bans me follow option 🙄 I think they’re changing internal algorythm"

[dbmathis]

Nobody knows what is going on at this point. Wait and see.

[steffanjensen]

Also is anyone actively working on a machine learning bot?

I am the only one working on it, i have tried to get the devs to see the light for months, but mostly i just got laughed at by "being a fun side project" bu the community, the devs are starting to wake up, but still most think this is just a phase which is isn't :(

You can find my bot here:
https://github.com/instagrambot/instabotai/

All sleep times are total random.

As you can see i am the only one who has developed on this project for months, nobody is intereseted because "the other bots" worked fine, but now we are here.. I thought the ban hammer would come may, june.. I was around right.

[steffanjensen]

Nobody knows what is going on at this point. Wait and see.

I do..

[DoJoMast3r]

Also is anyone actively working on a machine learning bot?

I am the only one working on it, i have tried to get the devs to see the light for months, but mostly i just got laughed at by "being a fun side project" bu the community, the devs are starting to wake up, but still most think this is just a phase which is isn't :(

You can find my bot here:
https://github.com/instagrambot/instabotai/

All sleep times are total random.

As you can see i am the only one who has developed on this project for months, nobody is intereseted because "the other bots" worked fine, but now we are here.. I thought the ban hammer would come may, june.. I was around right.

Woah awesome, I think its the only real tool against machine learning, fire with fire. Im not much of a coder, but would love to do some testing if needed

[Mehran]

before I got banned and it will fix after 4-5 hours, but yesterday I got banned from following and still keep banned. I also stopped everything to see what happen.

[dbmathis]

Relief, can you see the Instagram code or have you spoken to the Instagram developers? Doubtful. You claim to know what’s going on but in reality what you know is nothing more than theories.

Just because internet articles say one thing doesn’t necessarily follow that the current situation is related.

Wait and see what happens or code against imaginary causes.

[dunky11]

If you want to have some insight of what in theory Instagram could be doing, you could read this paper released half a year ago by the Facebook research team.
https://research.fb.com/publications/following-their-footsteps-characterizing-account-automation-abuse-and-defenses/

[hkr86]

Also is anyone actively working on a machine learning bot?

I am the only one working on it, i have tried to get the devs to see the light for months, but mostly i just got laughed at by "being a fun side project" bu the community, the devs are starting to wake up, but still most think this is just a phase which is isn't :(

You can find my bot here:
https://github.com/instagrambot/instabotai/

All sleep times are total random.

As you can see i am the only one who has developed on this project for months, nobody is intereseted because "the other bots" worked fine, but now we are here.. I thought the ban hammer would come may, june.. I was around right.

Funny, do you really think random sleep time is what solves the problem? The requests made by the bots can be easily spotted as bot activities ...

[steffanjensen]

Also is anyone actively working on a machine learning bot?

I am the only one working on it, i have tried to get the devs to see the light for months, but mostly i just got laughed at by "being a fun side project" bu the community, the devs are starting to wake up, but still most think this is just a phase which is isn't :(
You can find my bot here:
https://github.com/instagrambot/instabotai/
All sleep times are total random.
As you can see i am the only one who has developed on this project for months, nobody is intereseted because "the other bots" worked fine, but now we are here.. I thought the ban hammer would come may, june.. I was around right.

Funny, do you really think random sleep time is what solves the problem? The requests made by the bots can be easily spotted as bot activities ...

No i don't think it will solve it, this is just a step in the right direction.

[Zettt]

@ccanete @hw711 My scripts have random delays after every action and also after every group of actions. Also I just perform a small amount of actions and then jump to another ones. Even with all of that security I've been building, the follow blocking still happened while using a graphic browser (non-headless) using my home internet.

Just going to add this point to the discussion. If some action has random delays in between, it looks like a pattern to an AI. I'm not sure, though, whether Instagram really looks at each user individually this way.

[sionking]

the common theory now is 6000 follow limit a month getting this block. just wait.

[OGProgrammer]

Read that white paper and seems follow and collusion networks are targeted.

A more effective long-term strategy can be built on deferred interventions (e.g., removing synthetic actions after at a future point).

It's safe to assume there is some AI around follow limits/actions - Also if you buy actions from services/networks, they can just retroactively remove those actions (likes, follows, etc.)

I'm gonna give it a try and just turn off following but let it unfollow. I did hear unfollow actions also are monitored.

[steffanjensen]

Are people only experience the follow block for following people ?

I have also gotten follow block because i viewed stories and reposted images and send to many DM's.. without following

[mikediachenko]

Are people only experience the follow block for following people ? ...

@reliefs My account is blocked for following for 5 days already and following count is dropping every day.

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[DoJoMast3r]

So just to clarify it seams the following/unfollow is the best way to trigger a ban? Is auto liking not getting flagged as much as auto following?

[hw711]

@reliefs My account is blocked for following for 5 days already and following count is dropping every day.

Same. Probably because all the bots are on their unfollow cycle and can't follow us now. lol

[mikediachenko]

So just to clarify it seams the following/unfollow is the best way to trigger a ban? Is auto liking not getting flagged as much as auto following?

@DoJoMast3r At the moment autoliking still works. At least something...

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[Mehran]

anyway, it's not safe to continue to use a bot for like/comment also, should stop anything and wait to see what happen.

[Herrox]

I think with all the AI/ML technologies poping, the bot must act as a real human being as close as possible. Obviously first step will wait to find out more what going on with Instagram.

But I think Instead of going directly to someone's account using the http link, the bot should instead go to the search function of Instagram, then type the name of the account, then click on it and start to interact with it. I guess it could helps to be less detect as bot. Same as forging the User-Agent, even if it could be easily forged. In my opinion, it's such kind of small steps that can helps to stay under the radar but obviously Instagram has an army of developper and will always try to shut us down that's why botting is always at our own risk

[DoJoMast3r]

I think with all the AI/ML technologies poping, the bot must act as a real human being as close as possible. Obviously first step will wait to find out more what going on with Instagram.

But I think Instead of going directly to someone's account using the http link, the bot should instead go to the search function of Instagram, then type the name of the account, then click on it and start to interact with it. I guess it could helps to be less detect as bot. Same as forging the User-Agent, even if it could be easily forged. In my opinion, it's such kind of small steps that can helps to stay under the radar but obviously Instagram has an army of developper and will always try to shut us down that's why botting is always at our own risk

I definitely agree, even things only a human would do, like occasionally entering in the wrong password, logging out of sessions accidentally liking/following, random scrolling behavior and just simulating browsing a feed, EI watch the entire video befor just blinding liking the video like a bot.

These little behaviors could all be manually programmed in, but I think using machine learning with conjunction with new human like functions, EI typing each letter instead of pasting text might go along way.

[hw711]

I think with all the AI/ML technologies poping, the bot must act as a real human being as close as possible. Obviously first step will wait to find out more what going on with Instagram.
But I think Instead of going directly to someone's account using the http link, the bot should instead go to the search function of Instagram, then type the name of the account, then click on it and start to interact with it. I guess it could helps to be less detect as bot. Same as forging the User-Agent, even if it could be easily forged. In my opinion, it's such kind of small steps that can helps to stay under the radar but obviously Instagram has an army of developper and will always try to shut us down that's why botting is always at our own risk

I definitely agree, even things only a human would do, like occasionally entering in the wrong password, logging out of sessions accidentally liking/following, random scrolling behavior and just simulating browsing a feed, EI watch the entire video befor just blinding liking the video like a bot.

These little behaviors could all be manually programmed in, but I think using machine learning with conjunction with new human like functions, EI typing each letter instead of pasting text might go along way.

Drunk DMing girls at 4AM in the morning on weekends?

[jinayG]

My Account wasa banned 21 days ago and the ban is still not lifted. Although, now I am able to follow accounts but the ban message still pops up.

[Mehran]

@jinayG I think it's not True, can you check it again? follow and refresh again to see what happen.

[jinayG]

@Mehran I just checked, in Desktop browser it still does not allow to follow and in Mobile App it is following but the pops the ban message.

[Mehran]

@jinayG And after you got error did You check that account Really Added to your Following List? (your following Counter go up ?)

[spikeyhair]

@jinayG i got the same experience from you but if you killed the app, load it up and search for that profile again, you will notice it is still not followed.

[jinayG]

Yeah, I checked, it's still not followed.
21 days is a long time for a ban to be imposed.

On Mon 10 Jun, 2019, 5:39 PM spikeyhair, [e-mail] wrote:

@jinayG https://github.com/jinayG i got the same experience from you
but if you killed the app, load it up and search for that profile again,
you will notice it is still not followed.

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[CharlesCCC]

@CamiloB You might want to edit the original post as your account didn't get "deleted" it was false positive. Because the title will be really scare people away. (TBH, I have seem quite some people get blocked/banned due to crazy setting, but not a single user get deleted with Using InstaPy)
@sionking Good to see you pal.

You are wrong buddy, instagram released a new machine learning banning system 3 days ago.

How do you know they released a new ML system 3 days ago ? Can you show us some proof.

[steffanjensen]

@CamiloB You might want to edit the original post as your account didn't get "deleted" it was false positive. Because the title will be really scare people away. (TBH, I have seem quite some people get blocked/banned due to crazy setting, but not a single user get deleted with Using InstaPy)
@sionking Good to see you pal.

You are wrong buddy, instagram released a new machine learning banning system 3 days ago.

How do you know they released a new ML system 3 days ago ? Can you show us some proof.

They made an official statement 7 months ago they would start to implement the ML bot detection over the next year.. 4 days ago people start reporting massive banning and blocking for using bots.

Now people starts to hit the ban hammer.

There are many reports and pr from instagram and facebook in this post about their new ML system.

[CharlesCCC]

@reliefs Okay, I saw you previous post about PR and reports. In conclusion, those are speculation, no solid proof yet. As some people mention in previous post, we will wait and see. At the same time, we can thinking about what will be the best strategy to strike back the Ant-Bot system (if there is one).

As your InstabotAI I don't see how it could help on this problem, All I can tell is it integrated some sort of Face detection logic ?

[steffanjensen]

@reliefs Okay, I saw you previous post about PR and reports. In conclusion, those are speculation, no solid proof yet. As some people mention in previous post, we will wait and see. At the same time, we can thinking about what will be the best strategy to strike back the Ant-Bot system (if there is one).

As your InstabotAI I don't see how it could help on this problem, All I can tell is it integrated some sort of Face detection logic ?

lol

[CharlesCCC]

@reliefs what's so funny ? Would you mind share it so we can all laugh about it ?

[steffanjensen]

@reliefs what's so funny ? Would you mind share it so we can all laugh about it ?

No i will not try to change your mind, many main devs has accepted that ML is the reason for this bot detection, what you "believe" is up to you.

[ZKing1000]

I'd like to give a perspective:

This situation is a symptom of much larger problems.. If the political steam behind it had the power and clue, they would simply break up Facebook/Instagram and support efforts to decentralize social media and the internet directly. I say this as someone who doesn't really believe that this is a winning strategy for Instagram.

A centralized and potentially guarded ML type counter system, from our side would likely be effective.

From that perspective, I support @reliefs effort; Great starting point, looking for contributions?; The web api, however, is deprecated....

[steffanjensen]

I'd like to give a perspective:

This situation is a symptom of much larger problems.. If the political steam behind it had the power and clue, they would simply break up Facebook/Instagram and support efforts to decentralize social media and the internet directly. I say this as someone who doesn't really believe that this is a winning strategy for Instagram.

A centralized and potentially guarded ML type counter system, from our side would likely be effective.

From that perspective, I support @reliefs effort; Great starting point, looking for contributions?; The web api, however, is deprecated....

I have also heard rumor that this is just a political "stunt", after the us election started to use the "russia bots" propaganda on facebook, facebook has to do this, this is of course another subject i will not focus upon why facebook changed their bot detection system, but seeing what zuckerberg had to go trough after all these facebook bots "can win an election" scandals, it's not weird he is starting to take massive actions against us on his platforms.
Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing-the-election-for-trump

There is of course a way around this, the real way is to use ML everything else can be patched and will, we don't know how the bot detects, but i don't think it is bind to only a few variables like follow/unfollow.

I am even afraid it can detect new variables, like if instagram created a new feature, they don't have to manual change their ML to detect abuse from this new feature, but the ML can detect the abuse, just from learning it itself without human input, if this is the case a new way around will be patched within weeks instead of months. But there is no proof of that and from what i have seen it is not the case yet, but it is scary.

Here are som fixes people say are "working" better, but as others devs has pointed out, when the ML gets smarter it will also detect them, this is why ML is the only real fix.

Here are information i have gathered:

• change useragent
• Using 4g proxy.
• Using selenium instead of web api.
• Use old accounts 4+ years(Confirmed to work, higher limit but still lower than before)
• change device (All big bots use samsung as default)

You are more than welcome to contribute to instabotai, the bot still has many flaws, i am working now the get everything fixed into functions, classes and modules, so it's more use friendly to contribute to the project, i am also working on gui and web gui right now.

You can see the features i am working on right now:
https://github.com/instagrambot/instabotai/projects/2

But all contributions are welcome :+1:

[ZKing1000]

Before long monkey typing and dank memes may be the only acceptable form of social media use!

JK, lol.

[samrap]

I've yet to see anyone report getting blocked for likes but it appears as of ~05:16 UTC likes are getting blocked, at least for me

[Mehran]

@samrap And what about comment ? can you send Comment ?

[Zettt]

What I've been asking on some forum, and didn't get an answer to:

• How does Instagram determine, where the user is active? How do they know, when we "switch" to a new device? That would affect how to automate in the future, I presume, because then we can make better decisions which actions to execute, when a user is out and about traveling, and creating live stories.
• What countermeasures can we execute to not be blocked again in the future? As I mentioned before in this issue, having a "random" delay attached to actions looks too regular to an AI. Therefore I'd have a bunch of ideas:
  
  
  
  • To mimic real user behavior we could use random delays every time a block of actions, e.g. follow, unfollow, like, comment, is executed.
  
  
  • Along the same lines goes the idea to greatly change how many actions are executed, e.g. 10 actions on time, and 36 actions the next time.
  
  
  • Blocks of actions could be "grouped" together to create spiking user activity with pausing activity in between, thus creating the appearance of not always using the app.
  
  

[JoeFertig]

Just my 2 cents:

• To mimic real user behavior we could use random delays every time a block of actions, e.g. follow, unfollow, like, comment, is executed.

=== I thought that is already achieved by using
"session.set_action_delays(enabled=True, like=5.2, randomize=True, random_range=(70, 140))"

• Along the same lines goes the idea to greatly change how many actions are executed, e.g. 10 actions on time, and 36 actions the next time.

=== I thought that is already achieved by using "stochastic_flow"
Maybe we should check for a function that just scrolls around and opens pics without doing any action?

[Zettt]

@JoeFertig: That's not what I meant or wrote. What I meant that on every new cycle of actions, the delays have to be randomized again. If you keep using the same old randomized delays, they are, in a way, always the same.

[hw711]

@JoeFertig: That's not what I meant or wrote. What I meant that on every new cycle of actions, the delays have to be randomized again. If you keep using the same old randomized delays, they are, in a way, always the same.

if you make the range very big, it won't be similar each time.

[JoeFertig]

@JoeFertig: That's not what I meant or wrote. What I meant that on every new cycle of actions, the delays have to be randomized again. If you keep using the same old randomized delays, they are, in a way, always the same.

if you make the range very big, it won't be similar each time.

True!
And random means random so you don't need to change the delay every time. You could also do a division or another type of calculation to get very unique randomized results.

[steffanjensen]

Some devs are saying it looks like they rolled back on the protection part, are people still having issues?

[hw711]

Some devs are saying it looks like they rolled back on the protection part, are people still having issues?

still blocked

[JoeFertig]

Some devs are saying it looks like they rolled back on the protection part, are people still having issues?

never had problems. But I am not following a lot of people.
In June I did 1055 follows and 3165 likes.

[CamiloB]

@JoeFertig thats great

[Mehran]

    Still blocked

On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 5:47 PM +0430, "Steffan Jensen" [e-mail] wrote:

Some devs are saying it looks like they rolled back on the protection part, are people still having issues?

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[JoeFertig]

can you guys tell me how many follows & likes you've done in June?
And do you guys use the relationship tools?

[Tr1pke]

Also blocked. All my 6 accounts on 6 different ip’s
And 4 of my ip’s change randomly

[dbmathis]

Relief, who is “they” and what is the “protection part”? Posting links to ambiguous articles online doesn’t count.

Zettt, if the goal is to make a bot look like a regular user then at the end of the effort you become a regular user and lose the benefits of what a bot offers. There’s no point in writing a bunch of code to perform a handful of tasks for negligible results.

[ZKing1000]

This code has been running great for a while now:

session.follow_user_following(['space_trashy', 'kalsplay'], amount=10000, randomize=True, sleep_delay=1728)

Other code has been ip blocked and flat out blocked, looks like the sleep_delay isn't a huge factor.

Edit: Shit! Looks like they got that too now...
I can't believe this... I understand wanting to block abusive accounts, but this is too much. Machine Learning for this is essentially catering to the masses and therefor potentially dumbing down the entire platform.

Ok, think it was just an ip block... That code still generally works.

[JoeFertig]

session.follow_user_following(['space_trashy', 'kalsplay'], amount=10000, randomize=True, sleep_delay=1728)

==> amount=10000 and that worked without problems? Unbelievable...

[hw711]

session.follow_user_following(['space_trashy', 'kalsplay'], amount=10000, randomize=True, sleep_delay=1728)

==> amount=10000 and that worked without problems? Unbelievable...

1728 second is almost half an hour. so following 10 then take half an hour break, that's only like 50/day (probably less if there is unfollow cycle too). If the 30 day block limit is 5000, that's way under

[mikediachenko]

Finally, today after a week of Following blockage, my account is back to be able for Following. But, for the moment I will not use bot for some time, just to prevent any issues and just wait.

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[JoeFertig]

1728 second is almost half an hour. so following 10 then take half an hour break, that's only like 50/day (probably less if there is unfollow cycle too). If the 30 day block limit is 5000, that's way under

Think that has nothing to do with the breaks. You can max follow 7500. So 10000 is over this limit. When you followed 7500 acc you need also to unfollow them. This is a classic bot behavior.

[JManke91]

@mikediachenko Thanks for the update, good to know!
Is anybody else's account back to normal, i.e. able to follow again, after a follow block?

[xuhig]

still blocked...already a week

[mikediachenko]

still blocked...already a week

@xuhig What action do you do now with the account? Liking, posting anything? Because, I pasted couple of photos this week and when was trying to follow somebody, from mobile, I was receiving an error “Temporary blocked for this action”. And every time I was pressing “Tell us about it” button. I’ve done it for 20-30 times. Maybe, somehow it helped to unlock my account.

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[Tr1pke]

Still blocked. Over 2 weeks

[xuhig]

still blocked...already a week

@xuhig What action do you do now with the account? Liking, posting anything? Because, I pasted couple of photos this week and when was trying to follow somebody, from mobile, I was receiving an error “Temporary blocked for this action”. And every time I was pressing “Tell us about it” button. I’ve done it for 20-30 times. Maybe, somehow it helped to unlock my account.

Sent with GitHawk

my error is "action block", without temporary, maybe different from yours.
i post a photo 2 days ago , the engagement is still very good

[Mehran]

Still Blocked , I have This question if We just try Like/Comment maybe got Follow Block ? or that follow block is just for follow more users!

[JoeFertig]

Starting these actions from May 4th it will take approx. 30 days for a ban lift.

[spikeyhair]

mine still blocked, already 1 week+

[newcodemarc]

follow block and # problems are gone for me. But still gonna wait with the bot for a week or more

[JManke91]

follow block and # problems are gone for me. But still gonna wait with the bot for a week or more

@newcodemarc how long have you been follow blocked?

[JManke91]

Starting these actions from May 4th it will take approx. 30 days for a ban lift.
@JoeFertig Do you think it's even safe to say that a follow block will be lifted at some point? Or is it possible the follow block is going to be permanent?

[Tr1pke]

Can be a permanent because it’s a bot account for them. It’s a punishment

[Luismij]

11 blocked accounts...
What should we do?

[CharlesCCC]

@Luismij Can you show your configure ?
My account blocked for couple days, I turned off following/unfollow for now, everything running like a charm. Keep in mind, I don't have any crazy amount like some people does.

I only like <1000 per day...

For those are still blocked, Can you please share your configure ? Or how many follow/unfollow and engagement you set-up ?

[Tr1pke]

40 followers per hour

[CharlesCCC]

@Tr1pke That still a lots...
24*40 = 960 per day...

[Tr1pke]

12 hour. My bot sleeps during the night like I do. Wanted to make it human like that

[Tr1pke]

And it’s one hour follow, 1 hour unfollow back one hour follow one hour unfollow so I think it’s more like max 300 a day

[Luismij]

@CharlesCCC this is my quickstart.py
almost all my accounts works in the same way.
the only thing that change is the number of follows/unfollows

PD: i'm using 5 accounts per droplet in digital ocean.

https://paste.ofcode.org/SU7VFyjnWasBeWahMHNPZ4

[newcodemarc]

follow block and # problems are gone for me. But still gonna wait with the bot for a week or more

@newcodemarc how long have you been follow blocked?

I guess it lasted for around 2-3 Weeks.

[pneumokoniose]

Just for safety: What is with issue #4540? I was also blocked. But then I noticed that session.set_action_delays do not work. All actions went without delay. Maybe that's a reason too.

[JoeFertig]

Starting these actions from May 4th it will take approx. 30 days for a ban lift.
@JoeFertig Do you think it's even safe to say that a follow block will be lifted at some point? Or is it possible the follow block is going to be permanent?

=> I don't think it will be permanent if they punish you for the first times and you didn't do massive abuse. But after the rules changed now we all have to do a bit slower. I think that is the reason why I've never been punished when using InstaPy: my settings are very low - I follow 150 peeps a day and unfollow just twice a week. Still got like min 500 new followers every month. That's ok for me. And also the engagement doesn't drop if you don't bot too hard.

[JoeFertig]

My account blocked for couple days, I turned off following/unfollow for now, everything running like a charm. Keep in mind, I don't have any crazy amount like some people does.

I only like <1000 per day...

That's exactly what I'm saying. People getting too greedy.

"11 accounts blocked"
"I only did 500 follows and unfollows a day"
"Only 2 of my 30 accounts work"
"Set the unfollow amount to 10000"

When you read stuff like this and see all those spam comments on insta you can totally understand that insta is pissed. Sometimes I think that maybe we (the contributers and project managers) are a bit responsible for this mess cause we don't have safe limits in our code. Yes ofc it is the responisibility of the user but when you read that most of the users have too risky settings and get busted it affects us all.

[MHzCode]

I don't think that it's related to type of bots, random timing, IP, or anything like these.

Accounts that was used to follow/unfollow too much in the past are flagged and must wait for at least a month to get un flagged. Even after you get unblocked from follow, don't start follow/unfollow for at least a month.

I have accounts that i didn't use them for follow/unfollow for about a month and they have no problems now. I can do follow/unfollow with them in bot. But some accounts that i used them too much for follow/unfollow now they got blocked. Even after unblock, after 3,4 follow, they get block again.

Accounts that was used to follow/unfollow too much in the past was flagged and need to wait for a month.
Maybe Limitations increased. we should not follow more than 200 per day. It can be a monthly limitation.

[jinayG]

Blocked since 3 weeks

On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 2:44 PM xuhig [e-mail] wrote:

still blocked...already a week

—
You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub
https://github.com/timgrossmann/InstaPy/issues/4490?email_source=notifications&email_token=ABGBVCQGRYQZTDSSZ5UABXDP2C45VA5CNFSM4HRI6ZHKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGODXPYUVA#issuecomment-501189204,
or mute the thread
https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABGBVCUJP6LJ6UPIUGIKMZTP2C45VANCNFSM4HRI6ZHA
.

[hw711]

I have accounts that i didn't use them for follow/unfollow for about a month and they have no problems now. I can do follow/unfollow with them in bot. But some accounts that i used them too much for follow/unfollow now they got blocked. Even after unblock, after 3,4 follow, they get block again.

Accounts that was used to follow/unfollow too much in the past was flagged and need to wait for a month.
Maybe Limitations increased. we should not follow more than 200 per day. It can be a monthly limitation.

The theory is a 5-6K in last 30 day block. So I was doing 500/day and had 15k in last 30 days when they pushed out the limit. Not sure how long the block is but once lifted, if # of follows is still over 5-6K (say 10K after 10 day block), another follow will trigger the block again that's why there is no point in restarting the follow process until # of follow in last 30 days drop below 5-6K.

[mikediachenko]

And today my account got blocked for Following again...

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[Zettt]

@JoeFertig => […] I think that is the reason why I've never been punished when using InstaPy: my settings are very low - I follow 150 peeps a day and unfollow just twice a week. Still got like min 500 new followers every month. That's ok for me. And also the engagement doesn't drop if you don't bot too hard.

Would you mind sharing how you do that? It sounds intriguing. And after all the hoopla now, I'm going to change my approach massively. In case that kind of stuff doesn't fit here, I'm also on Riot, Telegram, and WhatsApp.

[Tr1pke]

Was headless browser on or off ?

[newcodemarc]

My account blocked for couple days, I turned off following/unfollow for now, everything running like a charm. Keep in mind, I don't have any crazy amount like some people does.
I only like <1000 per day...

That's exactly what I'm saying. People getting too greedy.

"11 accounts blocked"
"I only did 500 follows and unfollows a day"
"Only 2 of my 30 accounts work"
"Set the unfollow amount to 10000"

When you read stuff like this and see all those spam comments on insta you can totally understand that insta is pissed. Sometimes I think that maybe we (the contributers and project managers) are a bit responsible for this mess cause we don't have safe limits in our code. Yes ofc it is the responisibility of the user but when you read that most of the users have too risky settings and get busted it affects us all.

Yeah, I agree with you. Some people go too crazy with their follows/likes....
How about having an official guideline with approved numbers which can be followed when you set up your quickstart script in the beginning? Like we recommend using those kinds of actions and those amounts a day...

[dbmathis]

Back in the early 90s and through the 90s, I remember when computers and internet were new and unspoiled. Then we dumbed it down for the public and the public ruined it. Same for Instagram, only the public is hundreds of times dumber and they are ruining something that was pathetic from the start.

When you bring stupid into the mix, things get ruined for everyone.

[Herrox]

Guys, let's make it clear. it's not because some goes crazy or not with numbers that Instagram detect bot. It's with hundreds if not thousands of parameters and really advanced techno like AI/ML (Artifical Intelligence / Machine Learing). The goal is to ban bot, obviously but also to protect themself against any attack.
Stop blaming Instagram, as IT pro we do the same all day long and we all know that botting is against all TOS whatever the websites or games

[CharlesCCC]

@JoeFertig @newcodemarc
we can potentially code it in a way to limit only certain number of actions (like/follow/unfollow), that should minimize those "non-coder" to go over the limit, but it won't effect anybody who knows how to code. (Which I'm totally fine with that, assume people know how to code know what he/she is doing and know the limit).

Another thing is people might complain say the setting not working anymore, for instance, they might say "I set the limit to follow 1000 per day, but I only follow 100 users, it a bug in InstaPy" etc...

[CharlesCCC]

@Herrox As InstaPy community contributor, I'm totally not blame Instagram, they are doing whatever they need do to keep the Instgram community nice and healthy. I'm blaming all those crazy/greedy user who don't know how to keep their limit, basically abuse InstaPy/Instagram which cause bigger problem.

In retrospective, bot is banned by everybody, but it has been in the grey area for a long time.

In one way, Tech company hate bot;

In another way, the bot(normal,not greedy) helped increase community activities, For most of us who using InstaPy, we are not some bot-farm that make money out of bot, but using it as convenient tool to help build Instagram influence, which means even with using the bot, I'm still open Instagram 100+ times a day to look at somebody's content and engage(like,comment).

[Tr1pke]

I’m doing 500 a day and I’m blocked for a couple of weeks already

[JoeFertig]

Would you mind sharing how you do that? It sounds intriguing. And after all the hoopla now, I'm going to change my approach massively. In case that kind of stuff doesn't fit here, I'm also on Riot, Telegram, and WhatsApp.

Well if you want I can send you some code that I use.
My approach is to find people who will really follow me back and comment / like my stuff. If I find 30 new active followers a day I am super happy.

What you don't wanna do:
I remember that one time my bot liked some crazy Cristiano Ronaldo fan account and they spammed me with like 500 follows and 300+ comments/likes on 3 of my pics. These were all fake and decrease your follower activities. I spent a lot of time to remove them... even if I got lower like/commets on these pics.

[JoeFertig]

@JoeFertig @newcodemarc
we can potentially code it in a way to limit only certain number of actions (like/follow/unfollow), that should minimize those "non-coder" to go over the limit, but it won't effect ...

Another thing is people might complain say the setting not working anymore, for instance, they might say "I set the limit to follow 1000 per day, but I only follow 100 users, it a bug in InstaPy" etc...

==> got your point. I'm totally with you.

[JoeFertig]

Would you mind sharing how you do that? It sounds intriguing. And after all the hoopla now, I'm going to change my approach massively. In case that kind of stuff doesn't fit here, I'm also on Riot, Telegram, and WhatsApp.

Send me a msg

[ZKing1000]

@dbmathis Think decentralization is the answer? I'm trying to combat this on wiki: hgreenlab.com/wiki :)

Edit: Damn! They just completely shut down my crap account: session.follow_user_following(['space_trashy', 'kalsplay'], amount=10000, randomize=True, sleep_delay=1728)

So I made a new one: @robgreencoolio (He's a 40/50 year old white transgender extremist :3)

@Herrox Yeah, but FB and IG have a huge monopoly on data, instagram data belongs to the individuals of instagram; IG is essentially saying that it is the only entity allowed to benefit from these peoples' data, with little concern as to who is most successful on their platform.

I'm 17 and have only decided to get social media in the past few months; this crap is exactly why. All of facebook is styled white and blue, because of some random dude named Mark's color blindness; This is the same platform capable of potentially deciding the US election. That's a problem...

[hw711]

really advanced techno like AI/ML (Artifical Intelligence / Machine Learing).

You give people working at IG too much credit. They can't even keep their system up and running properly. How many major outrage is this now just this year alone?

[benash07]

do you know the duration of blocked shares?
I do not think that instagram definitely banishes old accounts.

In addition, I am not sure that the wave of banishment is entirely wanted as instagrams accounts that did not use bots were blocked.

[Mehran]

why we can Just Follow Verified users have more than 10M followers like cristiano, neymarjr . is it Bug ?

[Tr1pke]

why we can Just Follow Verified users have more than 10M followers like cristiano, neymarjr . is it Bug ?

no they are famous, apparently it helps getting a lot of followers

[Zettt]

@JoeFertig Send me a msg

Will do. Remember that GitHub removed private messages though. I'm gonna try Discord.

[mikediachenko]

Strange, my account is unblocked today. I can assume, that I was blocked again when started to use InstaPY just for liking photos... Will totally stop to use bots at the moment.

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[Tr1pke]

Strange, my account is unblocked today. I can assume, that I was blocked again when started to use InstaPY just for liking photos... Will totally stop to use bots at the moment.

Sent with GitHawk

did you used HEADLESS BROWSER ?

[mikediachenko]

Strange, my account is unblocked today. I can assume, that I was blocked again when started to use InstaPY just for liking photos... Will totally stop to use bots at the moment. ...

@Tr1pke never

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[Tr1pke]

@mikediachenko so you always saw what instapy was doing right?

[leviwinks]

I had 3 instances running from my home ip address, connected to a VPN midway through and all 3 simultaneously came up with "phew last follow not verified temporary block", all were running with the normal chrome browser with very small quotas

[mikediachenko]

@mikediachenko so you always saw what instapy was doing right?

yes

[Tr1pke]

I think it’s done for instapy
Instagram figured it out.

[mikediachenko]

I think it’s done for instapy ...

@Tr1pke Seems yes.

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[xuhig]

my follow action block removed today

[Tr1pke]

Can you follow only manually (like a 100/200 a day) and see if you get blocked again?

[elypsis]

Instagram have stated that they are using AI / ML to identify bot activity, which would probably be quite easy as you are likely to see similar clusters for bot activity compared to the majority of platform interactions. We need to include significantly more variability at each event to make it more "human like"

[MHzCode]

People still argue about AI Bot detection but these blocks have nothing to do with AI. It's just more limitation. Maybe 7k/month and less than 400/day follow.

[elypsis]

I don't use anywhere near those numbers and use quota supervisor with hourly server calls set at a modest 50/h and 2000/day.

[Tr1pke]

People still argue about AI Bot detection but these blocks have nothing to do with AI. It's just more limitation. Maybe 7k/month and less than 400/day follow.

Doing with 5 bots under 400 a day and all are blocked

[lezlea]

Sorry to join the party late - after the issues on the 4th June when some of my accounts got follow banned (not all, about 1/3) I added some slack notifications in to my InstaPy code so that I would get notified if the possible "temporary block" message was triggered on an account. That works great and I maybe wrong in my assumptions but I just received 8 "temporary block" notifications on an account and the following worries me...

In unfollow_util > verify_action - even if the return of the function is FALSE with "temporary block" message suggesting there might be a temporary block.... it will still go back and keep trying to follow other users in whatever follow loop it's in

Surely there should be something in place to stop it attempting over and over? I don't want to get the account completely banned before I have the time to stop it running... thoughts?

Also from what I've read the current max limits are 200 a day and 6k a month - so I'm doing way below this for now. I stopped running on all my accounts for a week but have just started up again very slowly.

Thanks, Lezlea

[leviwinks]

I've just made a couple of nerfs and so far so good! No issues...

[nadavdrukker]

Surely there should be something in place to stop it attempting over and over? I don't want to get the account completely banned before I have the time to stop it running... thoughts?

I completely agree. I actually had a mechanism in my quickstart to check for bans and stop the script if the last attempted follow was not followed. Then when I updated instapy I didn't realize that this check was inserted into the main code, but instead of stopping the script it just sleeps for a couple of minutes. Then I was too slow to realize this issue in the logs and got a serious ban.

So maybe just try following twice and if blocked, exit the follow loop with an appropriate error so we can choose in the quickstart whether to stop, pause or retry.

[ghost]

can you share the mechanism with us @nadavdrukker ?

[ghost]

@xuhig how long were you banned for?

[nadavdrukker]

can you share the mechanism with us @nadavdrukker ?

It doesn't work anymore, or else I wouldn't be banned. I was checking that the last follow was indeed followed and if it wasn't stopping the script. But now that the check is done inside the follow routine my check doesn't work. I need to think of how to modify the current follow routine, but my programming is not up to the standards of instapy. I tend to just make crude hacks on it with my idiosyncrasies without following proper coding practices. My suggestion would be some of the following:

1. After the 'Phew' warning exit all following routines (easiest with a raise, but more elegant exit, though requires more steps, since routines are very nested).
2. Introduce a variable self.blocked that is initiated as False and is changed after a 'Phew'. That can help exit the nested follow routines.
3. The 'blocked' variable also gets returned with self to quickstart, so after a follow loop I'd include "if session.blocked: quit()", or sleep(10000), or return it to False and try following another user and if comes back True again, then quit (that is essentially what my old code did, but it does not work on the current version of instapy.

[leviwinks]

My ban was lifted today, I did send a 'report a problem to Instagram' couple of my new accounts I'm using having been banned yet

[spikeyhair]

After a good 15 days of waiting, my ban also get lifted today. phew~~~~

[Luismij]

more than 10 days and still blocked! (11 accounts)

[Tr1pke]

im unbanned. I guess I won't use the bot anymore on my account as of now ...

[Tr1pke]

I followed 4 people manual and I’m blocked again

[Mehran]

@Tr1pke That means what happens to Instagram ?!

[Tr1pke]

That our bot accounts are in the black list

[lezlea]

You were just unblocked, and went straight to following again? It doesn't matter if it's manual or automated you need to let the account rest. No follows for 48-72 hours after the ban is lifted.

This isn't fact, but what I've read many times from people managing hundreds and thousands of accounts; the 200 a day, 6k limit is rolling for 30 days - So say today you are blocked and not following anyone and in the previous 30 days you followed 6100 people and in general you followed 200 a day, then tomorrow your 30 day rolling total is 5900... so your ban lifts. If you then follow 200 again then you're back to 6100 and over the limit and blocked again.
This way you can work out when you will be unblocked, roughly.... by checking how many you've followed in the last 30 days.

Although this seems to be the generally the case for most people, a few of my accounts I had only followed just over 5k and it took them rolling below 4500 to be unblocked. My accounts that were over 6k followers in the previous 30 days when the block started were unblocked when they hit around 5500.
I manage 30 accounts, only 9 were follow blocked and all are currently unblocked as of yesterday.

When you do start following again, start super slow. 5 a day, and up it by 5 each day until it reaches the new max which is believed to be 200. I'm only aiming for 155 follows a day, split out over 10 hours.

Take it easy and you can manually or automagically follow again!

Here is where I've been doing the majority of my research - the thread is closed but all the info still in there;
https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-follow-block-mega-thread-level-1-serious/68796/1215

[Mehran]

@lezlea where can I see how many accounts follow in the past month?

[lezlea]

In your logs folder there is an all_followed.csv which I used to work it out :)

[Mehran]

ok thanks, I forgot about logs. any command can I get to show all count paste month?

Manually is hard

cat my_id_followedPool.csv | grep '2019-06-04' | wc -l

[Mehran]

@lezlea ok i checked it and from 2019-05-04 to 2019-06-04 . i followed 11197 Accounts. i did 5197 more than 6000 now what happen? Must wait60 days to left?

[lezlea]

Well according to what people think the rules are, it would be a 26 day ban (5197/200 a day)... but then you would need to wait a few days (I waited a week) before resuming follows so that the numbers went down further and to slowly start it up again.
(note that mine took longer than the equation for the follow ban to be lifted so it isn't an exact art)

You can attempt a manual follow daily to see if you're unblocked and I have faith that in time you will be unblocked.

In the meantime I would recommend low numbers of unfollowing, liking, and liking comments - appearing to continue 'as normal' as well as posting.

Do you use a proxy?

[Mehran]

i see, no I not using a proxy .

[lezlea]

Are you running locally from your computer? If so then I wouldn't worry about a proxy.

[Mehran]

what do u mean to worry about proxy?

[Tr1pke]

What about unfollows any idea what's the limit?

[ghost]

I'm still blocked... sigh

[mikediachenko]

I'm still blocked... sigh

@halalfood just wait and try not to fo action, especially with bot, on your account. If it is possible, try liking of images, viewing stories, etc. manually from phone or tablet. As I saw on my account, it helped to get unblocked quicker.

_{Sent with GitHawk}

[Tr1pke]

`from instapy import InstaPy
from instapy import smart_run
from instapy import set_workspace

set_workspace(path=None)

insta_username = 'myaccount'
insta_password = 'mypassword'
session = InstaPy(username=insta_username,
password=insta_password,
headless_browser=True)

with smart_run(session):
session.set_relationship_bounds(enabled=True,
delimit_by_numbers=True,
max_followers=10000,
min_followers=50,
min_following=50)

session.set_do_follow(enabled=True, percentage=100, times=2)
session.set_skip_users(skip_private=False, private_percentage=0)
session.set_dont_include(["friend1", "friend2", "friend3"])
session.set_dont_like(["pizza", "#porn"])
session.follow_user_followers(['dogs.lovers','Brussels','dogs','dogsofinstagram','dogsofinstaworld'], amount=5, randomize=True, interact=False)
session.unfollow_users(amount=200, InstapyFollowed=(True, "nonfollowers"), style="RANDOM", unfollow_after=256060, sleep_delay=1000)
session.follow_user_followers(['vegan','veganbowls','veganjunkfoodbar','vegancommunity','veganvultures'], amount=5, randomize=True, interact=False)
session.unfollow_users(amount=200, InstapyFollowed=(True, "nonfollowers"), style="RANDOM", unfollow_after=256060, sleep_delay=1000)
session.follow_user_followers(['dogstrust','dogs_of_instworld','puppydogs.co’,’dogsofthewrld','vegan'], amount=5, randomize=True, interact=False)
session.unfollow_users(amount=200, InstapyFollowed=(True, "nonfollowers"), style="RANDOM", unfollow_after=256060, sleep_delay=1000)
session.follow_user_followers(['Belgium','vegan','foodspring','michaeljackson','jlo'], amount=50, randomize=True, interact=False)
session.unfollow_users(amount=200, InstapyFollowed=(True, "nonfollowers"), style="RANDOM", unfollow_after=256060, sleep_delay=1000)
session.unfollow_users(amount=500, InstapyFollowed=(True, "all"), style="RANDOM", unfollow_after=496060, sleep_delay=1000)
`

Is this a good script? this is what i'm using as of now hoping not to be blocked, i made a TEMP account
i would like to set this script back on my private account in a month

[hw711]

session.set_dont_like(["pizza", "#porn"])

I laughed

[AKwoKWH]

btw
do you guys receive email alert when the bot first login to the account?
I get a email with subject:
New login to Instagram from Unknown browser
and in the body of the email, it list out the device I used.
Device · Unknown browser · Hong Kong, Hong Kong
I want to say is - This is absolutely Normal, Instagram will notify suspicious login.
BUT , I think we need to set up _user agents_ which let the bot pretended to be a real device and act like human login attempt.
Like the below
Samsung SM-G930F · Chrome Mobile · Hong Kong, Hong Kong
instead of Device with Unknown browser

[AKwoKWH]

Referring to a Issue raised by @BitWaveUserAdvocate
https://github.com/timgrossmann/InstaPy/issues/4545

[Mikikk001]

After 15 days I'm still unable to follow.
But I noticed also that even if I said to the bot to not follow people and only like and unfollow, the like option won't work. it says:
Image not liked: b"none"
Not liked this post! more likes exists off maximum limit at "number of likes of the post"

Anyone has the same problem?

[Tr1pke]

After 15 days I'm still unable to follow.
But I noticed also that even if I said to the bot to not follow people and only like and unfollow, the like option won't work. it says:
Image not liked: b"none"
Not liked this post! more likes exists off maximum limit at "number of likes of the post"

Anyone has the same problem?

No,
I think your account is permanently blocked.

[Mikikk001]

After 15 days I'm still unable to follow.
But I noticed also that even if I said to the bot to not follow people and only like and unfollow, the like option won't work. it says:
Image not liked: b"none"
Not liked this post! more likes exists off maximum limit at "number of likes of the post"
Anyone has the same problem?

No,
I think your account is permanently blocked.

That's not true because when I'm using the phone I can like and I can Unfollow people, I just can't Follow.
With the bot instead, it doesn't like pictures

[Tr1pke]

Keep up the hope and wait

[Tr1pke]

Created a new account just to test, after 2 hours it was banned and deleted,
i followed 10 users then sleep 50 min then again 10 and got banned and deleted

[lezlea]

@Tr1pke were you using the same IP/proxy as another account that's currently blocked/banned?

[Tr1pke]

No. I have 100s of different ip’s if I want. Its never the same ip even if I wanted to

[lezlea]

@Mikikk001 I'm experiencing this on some accounts too - even ones that were never follow blocked a few weeks ago. The like or follow just doesn't go through, there is no popup warning, and the user isn't like or follow blocked on mobile. It doesn't seem to happen 100% of the time either, a few follows/likes may go through when I start up the service. I tried changing the IP but no luck. If you find anything that helps please do let me know and I'll do the same!

[Herrox]

They may have include some specific headers (or checks). If not included - when not using the iOS/Android official app - it higher the risk of being banned or directly triggered some alerts on the algorithm. As we don't know exactly how the app and their servers communicates.
I don't know if it is easily doable or not, but a secure way would be simulating an mobile OS + official app. Of course with the new limits rolled out last month

[Tr1pke]

would it be a problem if we turn all the bots in to only liking and commenting and no following?

[hw711]

of the 15 of my accounts that were blocked on 6/4, 13 came back (2 just went under 6k/30 today so I haven't tried them yet) and have been running 200 F/UF last couple days fine.

[shashgupta]

would it be a problem if we turn all the bots in to only liking and commenting and no following?

@Tr1pke I got my accounts unblocked (follow) after I started likes and comments through the bot (a very small number per day though)

[Tr1pke]

would it be a problem if we turn all the bots in to only liking and commenting and no following?

@Tr1pke I got my accounts unblocked (follow) after I started likes and comments through the bot (a very small number per day though)

Whats a small number? 200? and does it brings followers?

[ghost]

My account is finally unblocked from following as of this morning. I'm looking through the comments to see what I should set my quota supervisor to.

[hw711]

anyone got hit by another massive block today? I got the 6/4 blocks lifted earlier this week after the last 30 day follow dropped to 6k. But a bunch got blocked again today even though they are in 3-5k/30 day. And not all accounts are blocked, just half. It seems like they implemented another limit?

[spikeyhair]

Yesterday, I got this issue. The bot kept telling me I am being blocked for following again. I immediately stopped the bot and check. I found out that I can still follow using the app and laptop's browser but when I use the server's browser to follow (my bot run in server), it gave me error saying that it's blocked.

I changed my IG password, updated the bot and still see error message in server's browser.
I changed my server's public IP address, same thing still happen.
I changed my IG password again, same thing still happen.
I logged out from server's browser and run the bot. Let the bot login itself using the new password and recreate the cookie. Things back to normal.

[leviwinks]

After unblocking I took a 2 week break, have set the quota supervisor cut off to 720 server calls an hour run 4-5 times a day and so far its working as it was before. Usually have a max follow rate of about 30/hour, so about 150/day. Trying to keep under 6000 follows/month

[spikeyhair]

After changing IP, password and re-login, ran the bot for a while (less than 30 mins), I get blocked from following again.

Same troubleshooting steps: I tried with my phone and laptop's browser, can follow without block.

So I believe, IG blocked the IP again.

[leviwinks]

I went back to my original IP I had from the start

[Mehran]

Finally my account back to normal for Follow

[IKDH]

We are only 3 to experience follow block since the 29th of June ?

[Herrox]

Like I said previously, they might block/temporary block if actions (like, follow, comment...) don't come directly from the official app itself.
They may include some check to verify if the user is logged throught a web browser (which should not be the case in a regular activity) or from the app. If the IP used never connect to IG via the app, it might trigger some alerts on their algorithm

[IKDH]

According to https://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-follow-block-mega-thread-level-1-serious/68796/1980 people who are using mobile API automation from Jarvee are experiencing these block whereas it is emulating the official app. When they swich to embedded browser, some are able to follow again and some are able to follow for a few time but then get blocked again. To get unblocked, they are reseting their device ID. I don't think this has to do with mobile API or EB.

[hw711]

does Jarvee emulate the official app?

[IKDH]

There are two mode, one is emulating the official app and the second is emulating a browser like InstaPy does.

[lezlea]

@Mikikk001 I'm experiencing this on some accounts too - even ones that were never follow blocked a few weeks ago. The like or follow just doesn't go through, there is no popup warning, and the user isn't like or follow blocked on mobile. It doesn't seem to happen 100% of the time either, a few follows/likes may go through when I start up the service. I tried changing the IP but no luck. If you find anything that helps please do let me know and I'll do the same!

Update from my previous message -
I didn't receive a full follow block, but on the 29th I noticed all at the same time 6/12 accounts that were running were no longer able to like or follow.
They all popped up with "Action Blocked. This action was blocked. Please try again later. We restrict certain content and actions to protect our community. Tell us if you think we made a mistake".

All were WAY under the assumed new limits of 200 a day / 6k a month.

The accounts that had this pop up notification could still like and follow in their own apps... I just couldn't with my server / InstaPy.

Not all my clients were affected but I stopped all interactions for 48hrs.

I am going to try resume today, not sure if new IP addresses will help.

[mazi87n]

I changed my Instagram User Id then I run my script. Now it is working without any blocking messages.

To prevent blocking in the feature I edited page_delay in instapy.py to be 600 and this will limit the number of likes & follows to 60 each hour

[lezlea]

If you are warming up your account again it has been recommended to start at 10 an hour, with a maximum of 20 an hour (and 200 a day). 60 an hour sounds like a lot, and likely cause another block?

For me I deleted my cookie, updated my proxy IP and the block cleared :)

[dopa1213]

I Think ban is related to run environment (linux server, cygwin etc..).

When i run on ubuntu server(not use xwindows), cygwin, all action get blocked
But on window. it work very well.

I guess instagram know run environment is gui or not

[lezlea]

Hmm I'm not sure, I've been running on Windows and Chrome and some of my accounts were hit with a temporary ban (that is only web/browser not in the app, and I can lift the ban) on the 30th.

It appears to be more to do with hitting a certain limit of follows, likes or server calls that then flags the IP. When I change the IP it's fine again.

But the issue isn't entirely IP/Proxy because I share the same IP with 2 accounts and not all accounts sharing were affected.

[Tr1pke]

It’s the headless browsing i think
OS doesn’t matter, or people like me that have Linux only can’t use instagram. It’s a bit odd

[lezlea]

I'm not using headless either!

[Tr1pke]

I’m now only liking and commenting for almost a week without any problems in headless browser
I think it’s a combo of ip, server requests.

I also use my account and I view stories so it’s a working account that doesn’t only follow and unfollow. I post pictures I post stories that’s what a bot doesn’t do and I think Instagram checks that’s as well

[dopa1213]

Im using headless! It work

[lezlea]

Yeah totally - all my accounts are real, active, posting, viewing stories etc.
I received a few temporary like and follow blocks even though my settings are very conservative...
max 155 follows a day, max 125 likes a day, a few comments, max 180 unfollows a day.

Agree it could be server requests in my case - I am going to set up a separate system to get the valid users and then feed them in to the real accounts so that they aren't wasting server calls searching for valid users.

[brunano21]

After more than 3 weeks of no bot at all (it was running on Digital Ocean, in headless mode), I started again using my own laptop (Linux, no headless) and I got again the Follow block; I can follow from the app though.

Can anybody share their supervisor settings, please?

[Tr1pke]

After more than 3 weeks of no bot at all (it was running on Digital Ocean, in headless mode), I started again using my own laptop (Linux, no headless) and I got again the Follow block; I can follow from the app though.

Can anybody share their supervisor settings, please?

session.set_quota_supervisor(enabled=True,sleep_after=["likes_h", "likes_d", "follows_d"],sleepyhead=True,stochastic_flow=True,notify_me=True,peak_likes=(25, 1000),peak_follows=(20, 200),peak_unfollows=(40, 300))

Only using like and comment for now, going to wait a couple months to start the follow again...

i don't want to be banned permanently

[hw711]

If the IP used never connect to IG via the app, it might trigger some alerts on their algorithm

Interesting theory. All my instances (getting blocked heavily last 2-3 days after the 6/4 6000follow/30day block was lifted earlier last week) are running in the cloud so the IPs probably have never seen an IG app connection before.

[hw711]

If the IP used never connect to IG via the app, it might trigger some alerts on their algorithm

Interesting theory. All my instances (getting blocked heavily last 2-3 days after the 6/4 6000follow/30day block was lifted earlier last week) are running in the cloud so the IPs probably have never seen an IG app connection before.

Moved one instance to my laptop (which is on same wifi network as my phone) to test. Still got follow block after 20 follows (in 1 hour with completely random breaks and likes in between).

[Tr1pke]

One of my accounts has been blocked for liking I did 20 likes per hour.

[lezlea]

Instagram has been down and making more updates in the last 24 hours - I'm pausing all my growth until Monday at least to let everything settle down!

@Tr1pke if you have been previously blocked and are just starting up again you need to start with very low limits and increase them slowly daily - slow as in 5 likes and 5 follows the first day, 10 likes and follows the next day!

[brunano21]

So this morning I have tried with my personal laptop (linux). If I run the bot (no headless), I get Follow and Like block immediately, after one action. If I log on Instagram manually from a browser and try to Like or Follow, I don't get any action block...

Update: I delete my cookie and actions are not blocked anymore. 🙌🤗

[Luismij]

So this morning I have tried with my personal laptop (linux). If I run the bot (no headless), I get Follow and Like block immediately, after one action. If I log on Instagram manually from a browser and try to Like or Follow, I don't get any action block...

Update: I delete my cookie and actions are not blocked anymore. 🙌🤗

@brunano21 i have the same issue, but delete cookies doesn't work for me

[hw711]

Deleting cookies works for me. It may trigger a suspicious login verification next time you connect but it will clear the block...until it gets blocked again after 10-30 follows. I have yet to figure out a way to run for long period of time. Having to clear cookies and do verification every hour is a huge pain in the butt.

[lezlea]

Deleting cookies worked for me but I needed to warm up the account again - to keep growing with very low settings. On a few they were action blocked after a few interactions and so I stopped running their accounts for a week, which should help.

I keep saying once you get a block - you should wait 24hrs before interacting again, and then follow max 5 the next day then increase by 10 each day. If you go straight in to 30 follows you'll likely get blocked again. By increasing the numbers daily over a week or two my accounts have been fine.

Even after your account is warmed up (slowly increasing interactions), the limits are still stricter than we used to 'get away with' - 20 an hour, max 200 a day. But I will be working at max 155 a day.

It is believed the trust score on all accounts has been reset, so we need to build them up again with small interactions slowly increasing. If you keep encouraging follow blocks you account will be flagged.

[Herrox]

I keep saying once you get a block - you should wait 24hrs before interacting again, and then follow max 5 the next day then increase by 10 each day. If you go straight in to 30 follows you'll likely get blocked again. By increasing the numbers daily over a week or two my accounts have been fine.

Even doing that way, and after stop boting for almost 3 weeks, I have been "bot-block" again very quickly (bot-block = instapy was block, but not when using the official app). Settings was very low, with high delays and I was just warming up my account (4 or 5 years old account, 10k+ followers, high engagement rates, regular posting of stories and posts). I may not doing it the good way... :(

[lezlea]

I'm sorry to hear that! Did you delete the cookie and do a fresh login? And change the IP address/proxy?

[Herrox]

@lezlea I don't. I will do it for the cookie but can't change the IP address and I'm not using any proxy. I'll let you know but honestly, I don't think such kind of small adjustements will beat the ban algorithm. I'm almost certain they can detect if interactions come from the app or not and act in consequences. For some account not subject to ban, mayeb it is related to how they roll out their new features : group by group.

[cw7github]

Deleting cookies worked for me but I needed to warm up the account again - to keep growing with very low settings. On a few they were action blocked after a few interactions and so I stopped running their accounts for a week, which should help.

I keep saying once you get a block - you should wait 24hrs before interacting again, and then follow max 5 the next day then increase by 10 each day. If you go straight in to 30 follows you'll likely get blocked again. By increasing the numbers daily over a week or two my accounts have been fine.

Even after your account is warmed up (slowly increasing interactions), the limits are still stricter than we used to 'get away with' - 20 an hour, max 200 a day. But I will be working at max 155 a day.

It is believed the trust score on all accounts has been reset, so we need to build them up again with small interactions slowly increasing. If you keep encouraging follow blocks you account will be flagged.

Can I ask how you delete cookies in Instapy? Is there some .py file I need to edit and line of code I need to add? Sorry, I'm pretty beginner-ish =/

[lezlea]

Hey Charles, no worries at all... thankfully it's a lot simpler than that...if you go in to your instapy folder and then the log folder you'll see a few interesting csv files containing the details of everyone you have followed, unfollowed etc. There is also a cookie file (ending in _cookie.pkl) which you can delete.

Overall update; I've been running my accounts on the low settings above for nearly a week now and all have been running well :)
I'm too scared to increase the numbers though!!

[hw711]

anyone gotten more serious block after deleting too many cookies? Clearing cookies basically create a new connection session but I have a couple accounts after clearing cookies like 10+ times, it's blocked on the account level, not session level. Meaning even if I clear cookies again or even move to another server, I get immediately blocked upon creating a new connection session, using instapy or trying to login to a regular browser manually.

[lezlea]

Did you delete 10 times in a row(-ish) or over a few months? You say you get immediately blocked, do you mean in terms of interactions (follows/likes) or something else?

Most of my accounts required a new IP and clearing the cookie. If I just cleared the cookie the block seemed to stay. Maybe that is different if you're just growing one account on your home IP, I'm not sure.

A few were blocked again after a few follows (and therefore needed more resting) and so after a few days or a week I would then clear the cookie again, new IP, and try - and after that it's been fine.

The maximum I've done is 3 cookie refreshes in a week on one account and it's been running fine since. I probably wouldn't do more than that as I like to wait (rest) between doing anything that may spark IG.

[hw711]

like 10+ refresh over a handful of days. I'm testing with my child accounts (I got like 10 so if a couple gets blocked for a few days, it's not a big deal) pretty agressively so every time I get blocked, I will clear the cookie and try again with little rest (few minutes to a day). The block is from doing just following but I tried to comment when there is follow block, it wouldn't go through either (can still like)

[lezlea]

Yeah for me I've had to reduce the number of server calls - not just actions. Even if I follow 100 a day, if I add in it trying to find valid user, liking, liking comments etc it was apparently 'too much'....I've reduced my server calls to around 4000 per day. I run in 10 hour blocks but they are reaching the server limit quickly!

[Knrd2]

Hey guys, im facing the same problem: _This action was blocked. Please try again later. We restrict certain content and actions to protect our community. Tell us if you think we made a mistake._
Its weird, because im running two accounts one after another and just one account is getting this error message, the other one is running fine.. Ive tried to change a couple of settings but nothing really works.. any ideas?!

[Tr1pke]

Hey guys, im facing the same problem: _This action was blocked. Please try again later. We restrict certain content and actions to protect our community. Tell us if you think we made a mistake._
Its weird, because im running two accounts one after another and just one account is getting this error message, the other one is running fine.. Ive tried to change a couple of settings but nothing really works.. any ideas?!

The only idea where I can think of is that your other account also will be banned soon.
Stop it and change the settings and stop headless browsers

[Tr1pke]

anyone gotten more serious block after deleting too many cookies? Clearing cookies basically create a new connection session but I have a couple accounts after clearing cookies like 10+ times, it's blocked on the account level, not session level. Meaning even if I clear cookies again or even move to another server, I get immediately blocked upon creating a new connection session, using instapy or trying to login to a regular browser manually.

If you clear your cookies all the time it is a bit suspicious. Try not to clear your cookies. You don’t clear cookies on your phone / home computer all the time right? It ain’t real

[dbmathis]

@knrd2

Obviously one account is banned and the other is not. It’s been said over and over that nobody actually knows why accounts are being banned. Running a bot carries risks. Rules that you think you know can change overnight. If this doesn’t make sense to you then maybe a bot is not for you.

[dbmathis]

@lezlea

And you have no idea if things would have still gotten better had you not changed the server calls. You are guessing.

[cw7github]

Hey Charles, no worries at all... thankfully it's a lot simpler than that...if you go in to your instapy folder and then the log folder you'll see a few interesting csv files containing the details of everyone you have followed, unfollowed etc. There is also a cookie file (ending in _cookie.pkl) which you can delete.

@lezlea
Thanks so much, you're very helpful!

[hw711]

anyone gotten more serious block after deleting too many cookies? Clearing cookies basically create a new connection session but I have a couple accounts after clearing cookies like 10+ times, it's blocked on the account level, not session level. Meaning even if I clear cookies again or even move to another server, I get immediately blocked upon creating a new connection session, using instapy or trying to login to a regular browser manually.

If you clear your cookies all the time it is a bit suspicious. Try not to clear your cookies. You don’t clear cookies on your phone / home computer all the time right? It ain’t real

Sure, but I'm not clearing cookies for fun. lol. I clear cookies when it gets a hard block and clearing cookies is the only thing that gets around the block.

And some people do clear cookies all the time in general (outside of instagram). People use incognito mode of browsers (which clears cookies every session) because they don't like to be tracked. I think it's more rare people use IG on browsers than people who incognito mode.

[hw711]

@Knrd2

It’s been said over and over that nobody actually knows why accounts are being banned.

From my testings and getting many hundreds of blocks of various degree (that's why I have 10 child accounts testing very aggressively) especially last couple weeks trying to find patterns, there are at least 5 types of blocks.

1. 6000/30day block implemented on 6/4. This is account level block, once you are blocked, you are blocked even on apps and can only be resolved when you last 30day #of follows drops below 5-6K.
2. warning block. Even though you get a block message but you can ignore and retry immediately and follow will go through. Insteps verify_activity method does this retry so often time you won't even noticed this block unless you are watching it run constant.
3. soft block. Immediate retry wouldn't work (this is when you get a last follow not verified warning msg from instapy), but if you wait a few minutes, you can follow again so this is probably a X actions/Y minute rate limit block.
4. harder block that can last a long time (like days). This one is on the session level so clearing cookies will get around the block
5. account+browser level hard block. This block whether you clear cookies or even change IP/server wouldn't help, you would get immediately block when creating a new browser session. But it's only for browser (instapy or normal), would still work on the phone app.

Some of the above are caused by exceeding whatever new rate limits they set, some are caused by patterns detected by IG's new AI. Latter definitely got implanted at the end of June. If you replace instapy's follow method (which does explicit wait and verify action) and simply just program your bot to sleep after loading the targets' home page then click follow button, you would get picked up by the AI and hit with type 3/4 block within 10 follows even with 4-6 minute breaks between follows. That's what happened to my modified bot last couple weeks (why I was clearing cookies) until I switched back to using instapy's follow method which you you can follow as fast as 1-2 minute break between follow then 1000 second sleep delay between following batches and it wouldn't trigger any hard block.

[IKDH]

@hw711 Can you give more details about the difference between your custom bot and the Instapy follow method ?

[Mehran]

what about just Like And comment, is it Safe?

[Tr1pke]

its all safe within the limits

[hw711]

@hw711 Can you give more details about the difference between your custom bot and the Instapy follow method ?

I was just doing sleep random few seconds, follow button webelement.click(), and sleep random few seconds and nothing fancy. it was working perfectly fine until whatever bot detection put in at the end of June.

The main difference between my bot and instapy is not just the follow method part but the following work flow. Instapy validates users as it goes along which makes it hard to predict how many people you will end up following per period of time because say if you are following the commenters of someone and it craps out half way through for whatever reason and you rerun it again, instapy is going through the whole validating down the same commenter list again which is a waste of time because you already went through many of them already the first time. Or someone just happens to have a lot of commenters not fitting your criteria so you waste a bunch of time going through them and only end up following a small percentage.

My bot does the parsing of all the likers/commenters separately ahead of time and save in my database. Then my following work flow just makes a query from the database and only follows the ones I want in the order I want (say if I want to start with people who not just like/comment but like/comment most frequently). At first when I started getting hit by the end of June blocks, I thought it was the work flow difference because by validating along the way, instapy has a much bigger variance between time between each follow and it's very random but eventually I narrowed down my problem to just the button clicking part. I was ready to pull my hair out. lol.

[IKDH]

You said that with InstaPy follow method, you can now follow without haveing a block :

That's what happened to my modified bot last couple weeks (why I was clearing cookies) until I switched back to using instapy's follow method which you you can follow as fast as 1-2 minute break between follow then 1000 second sleep delay between following batches and it wouldn't trigger any hard block.

What is the difference between what your custom bot do and what InstaPy do ?

[hw711]

You said that with InstaPy follow method, you can now follow without haveing a block :

I said I can now follow without getting hard blocks within 20 follows. But I still get soft blocks and every once a while hard blocks. But now I can sometimes go up to following 200 in a row most of the time. I'm still doing more tweaks and testing to try to make it 100%.

There are different types of blocks as my previous long comment stated. The rate limits are easier to avoid, you just have to slow down. The automation detecting ones are harder to avoid unless you know what you do that's getting picked up. Like I said, I was waiting at least 5 minutes between each follow button web element click and still getting hard blocks easily.

[sebasware]

Hi everyone, did someone achieve with any solution ?, I've been researching and testing for 5 days but I can't get it to work, since I tried changing the server's IP, I also tried to change the user-agent and slightly increase the waiting times at different instapy points , but I still have the same message when i try to follow user:

Action Blocked: This action was blocked. Please try again later. We restrict certain content and actions to protect our community. Tell us if you think we made a mistake._

this is my instapy conf:

session = InstaPy(username="user", password="pass", headless_browser=True, nogui=True)
session.login()
session.follow_by_tags(arraywords, amount=10)

Someone has some viable way, I have been stuck for several days in search of some possible solution, but without luck :/,

thank you 🙏 🙏

[Knrd2]

I’m facing the same problem and can’t find any solution.. any suggestions?

[lezlea]

@hw711 - are you still doing 1-2 minute wait between each follow? I also have a custom InstaPy version I'm forever updating and changing - would love to chat with you about what's working and not working.

@sebasware - when you change your IPs, are they also different ISP? I read this may also be important and I'm testing with that. I would also recommend waiting at least 24 hours before trying again - for me this week I'm giving most of my accounts at least a 3 day pause (up to 7 days for accounts that keep receiving blocks)

[hw711]

yes 1-2 minute wait between follow works ok on 75% of my accounts. Some still gets blocked after a while and need to clear cookies but I have usually been able to go up to 200 follows/day with my working accounts. Some accounts just wouldn't work (like blocked with less than 20 follows) at all no matter what I try (I'm suspecting it's because of location of IG app on phone vs location of my VM because I'm constantly traveling but I can't be sure).

IG started blocking unfollows last week too and that's another mess that I haven't had time to try to adjust and get around.

[lezlea]

I've just started 25-45 second wait between follows (I was doing 45-90 seconds before) after recommendation from talking to Jarvee users able to follow around 200 a day. Attempting to get them 'done' in less time with longer waits between session.
Are you doing any likes? liking comments? etc. to split up the follows and make it 'appear' more human?

It must be my proxys affecting the action blocks then and why I can't get near those numbers on most of my accounts. I've tried so many different proxy companies but not having any luck so far.

[Knrd2]

@hw711 could you please post an example of your actions and the delay you’ve installed?! I would really appreciate it! Best

[hw711]

I wait 1-2 minute between follows. 6-10 follow batches with 10-12 minute wait between batches. I only do follows and unfollows (unfollows not working very well right now), no likes/comments in between. No proxy, can only run one instance per VM right now which is really expensive but haven't had a chance to look into proxies.

[lezlea]

I run 4 accounts per AWS Instance, running at different times (account specific) but overlapping, so I need proxies. Sounds like you are ok without proxies though! So with your technique you can do about 20 an hour, but theres not much wait between - just the 10-12 minutes? Or do you take a long pause at any time?

I'll see how I go with this shortened version and if not switch it up again!
Thanks :)

[hw711]

I also do a few minutes wait if I get a soft block. The setup is not ideal because running one instance of the bot(ie account) at 20 follows per hr is expensive considering my VM cost. If I can go faster, then I can schedule multiple instances to run. But I haven't had time to play with setting more now I'm traveling full time

[lezlea]

Ahhh I just realised one big thing I maybe doing different from other users. I'm picking a number to follow between 5-15, starting a session, following that number, then ending the session. Then next hour start a new session and do the same.

I've realised normally the first session works and the second if there is going to be problems, it will hit from the first follow. So I'm going to try the all in one session thing next!

I don't think my AWS instance is that expensive - maybe about £5-£10 a month depending how often you run. Also they do free limit tier for the first year which reduces costs. But the mobile proxies I'm trying are really upping the costs now :( I spent over £100 on data centre proxies last month just trying them all out, and now one mobile proxy is $50-$200! We'll see how they go.

[Juanlandolfi]

Hello. So, how is this going right now? Have someone found a quota setting for follow/unfollow activity? Thanks!

[thomaslc66]

What about spliting the actions ? Does somebody tried to make for exemple 3 differents scripts ( follow/unfollow, like, and comments) and run them during the day with some crontab or manualy?

Ok maybe some people sit on the couch and do 1 or 2 hour of insta in real life, but for me when i go to insta it's more 15 minutes on the bus, then 10 minutes at lunch or 3 minutes when i'm bored. I never spend 2-3 hours doing likes.

Does someone tested this ?

[Tr1pke]

What about spliting the actions ? Does somebody tried to make for exemple 3 differents scripts ( follow/unfollow, like, and comments) and run them during the day with some crontab or manualy?

Ok maybe some people sit on the couch and do 1 or 2 hour of insta in real life, but for me when i go to insta it's more 15 minutes on the bus, then 10 minutes at lunch or 3 minutes when i'm bored. I never spend 2-3 hours doing likes.

Does someone tested this ?

I only do it on the bus but I don't really care about liking other pictures, I only like what I like, worst case you bot starts liking porn pictures or violent pictures, well done bot !

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