The pervasive practice of botting by using fame-enhancing bots and operating porn bots, and Instagram’s opaque and unreliable authenticity governance, has evoked human Instagram users to actively police and govern botting and other bot activity. Botting describes repetitive and quantitative posting, messaging and engaging on social media platforms to provoke reciprocal engagement. Running bot police accounts, Instagram users engage and try to play an active role in the authenticity governance process of Instagram. The article investigates why and how Instagram users govern two types of “inauthentic” Instabots, which concentrate on detecting automated interactions by fame-enhancing bots and reporting porn bots. Two case studies of three Instagram accounts and their content show different approaches to user-led authenticity governance and how these profiles perceive themselves as custodians of “authenticity.” The key findings reveal that their activities of pillorying and collective flagging are considered digital vigilantism that potentially cause harm to other users. Furthermore, they show mechanisms of peer surveillance and mutual moderation on a user level, and complex power asymmetries between the platform company, its moderation systems, advertisers, and its users.
Keyword: Instagram
Corona Look of the Day: Social Media Posts About Disabled Beauty and Resistance in the Time of COVID-19
The authors created a photo and essay series entitled “Corona Look of the Day.” Each day we took photos of outfits paired with colorful makeup and inspired text descriptions about the beauty in disability. These posts were formulated as resistance to the eugenic discourse pervading the early days of the pandemic that argued disabled and elderly deaths were acceptable and probable. In contrast to this bleak assessment, this artistic series sought to affirm disability through uplifting portraiture.
DISTORIES
DISTORIES is a small open-source and open-access Instagram zine project, gathering testimonies from disabled contributors. This project began in the context of the summer of 2021, as mask mandates and general precautions around COVID-19 were being relaxed. Each chapter of the zine is introduced by a question, framing stories and snapshots of experience as well as demands, affirmations, and dreams shared by contributors. The project was stewarded by geunsaeng ahn from September 2021 to July 2022.