In Kazakhstan understood how to destroy Instagram accounts

12.01.2023, 13:01 ratel.kz

A remarkably elegant life hack was invented in Kazakhstan to attack irritating Instagram accounts. The method is based on a user agreement, which is concluded with each owner of account at the time of registration. As a user, you agree to the Terms, which ban from taking any action on Instagram that violates certain rights or the law. When the administration of this social network receives a “copyright infringement notice”, they immediately remove or disable access to content that PRESUMABLE (highlighted by the author - M.A.) was stolen from the copyright owner. They also remove accounts of repeat infringers in the same circumstances. At the same time, the complaint form allows any Instagram user to write a statement indicating the organization that owns the copyright and the organization's email address obtained from open sources. As our personal experience has shown, that Instagram admins conduct a very superficial check of user requests. For example, from December 26 to January 3, a wave of complaints about copyright infringement hit our Instagram account. December 26 - 3 complaints from Sberbank of Russia December 27 - 5 complaints from NCE "Atameken" January 3 - complaints from NCE "Atameken", KCELL, KASE. January 5 - 2 complaints from NCE "Atameken". All complaints were the same. The note mentions the organization, the message is followed by a photo, which has the logo of the corresponding company. Mass complaints were filed in the week before and after the New Year, apparently with the expectation that holiday efforts would be a priority. For example, in the case of NCE Atameken, on Instagram were posted announcements and links to materials about the events of the Chamber of Entrepreneurs, known for its social activity. Of course, it was impossible to avoid the mentions of NCE "Atameken" and not to use photos of the participants with logo banners on the background. It would be foolish to write about Atameken and not mention it, and also choose photographs without the logos of this organization. Moreover, any organization in the world is interested in increasing brand awareness, in fact, logos, banners and other printing are created exactly for this. The same thing was with other organizations. There were some miscalculations on the part of the organizers of the attack on the @officialratel account. In particular, a notification from Instagram, allegedly filed on behalf of the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE), with the complaint about copyright infringement came at 2.51 on 01.03.2023. At the same time, the complaint was about the material published on April 6, 2021. I am not sure that the Kazakh exchange traders endured for almost two years and only at the beginning of 2023 they decided to start a fight for copyright of brand. And one more nuance. The e-mail adress indicated in the complaint allegedly on behalf of KASE turned out to be internal, and never used for external communications. But since the logins "info", "support" and so on, are used by many companies, it is easy to bypass Instagram's verification of the validity of the email address. However, my hypothesis that this was a planned affair quickly confirmed. NCE Atameken and the KASE officially informed us that no complaints were sent to Instagram. The mobile operator KCELL had the same answer. I decided not to contact Sberbank, considering that Roskomnadzor has already tried to pressure our edition last year for anti-war materials, I gathered that the bank associated with the Russian government could indeed complain about critical publications. In general, it turned out that there is a huge loophole in the Instagram feedback system, which can be easily used to delete the accounts of a competitor or objectionable media. It is enough to find images or mentions of any brand in the attacked account and file a complaint on behalf of this brand. Oversight at Instagram has been reduced to mere coincidences, without any fact-checking, making it easy to take down accounts. However, we are talking about serious money that people invest in the development and promotion of Instagram blogs. In this way, the network turned out to be vulnerable, since it has a great black hole where anyone can be drown. I guess that such a neat, and, most importantly, almost free lifehack very soon become widely used around the world, which will make pointless creating content on Instagram. Photo: ratel.kz.