How STCP can indicate fake Instagram accounts
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-identify-a-fake-Instagram-account
The article “How do I identify a Fake Instagram Account,” while simplistic, ultimately uses basic concepts of the Strong Triadic Closure property and to help people determine if the accounts they come across on Instagram are real. The tips given are very basic. For example, one tip is to see how any people this account is following. If it is in the five thousand + range it is likely a fake account. Another tip is to check if the account is interacting with other people. Is this account liking other’s posts or commenting on them? The article also recommends checking the “engagement rate” of an account, or whether or not followers of the account interact with them. If it is very low (i.e. there are no likes on pictures) even though they have thousands of followers, it is probably not real.
So how do Strong Triadic Closure method and network structures answer these questions? Let’s look at the first tip: if an account is “following” too many people, it is probably fake. When learning about social networks in lecture, we learned that a person has many more weak ties than strong ties (they are easier to maintain and do not require the same amount of work). Following people on Instagram – while not an indication of a “strong tie” implies that there is a form of an observable network and interaction that the account desires. Following too many people would simply be too much work – no real person would try to maintain that following, and is therefore probably fake. This leads directly into the next tip: check on the interactions an account has with the accounts it follows and its followers. If no one is interacting with an account, and it is not interacting with anyone else, it is probably fake. While strong and weak ties are an indicator of real relationships – not having any ties at all is also a sign. For example, if one person has strong ties with two people, it is likely those two people also have a tie between them. If there is no tie, STC is violated and it is imbalanced. An applicable example of this would be if an account has no overlap between its followers and the people who follow that account. Say a weak tie indicates one person following another, and a strong tie is two people following each other. We know that you cannot have a social network entirely of weak ties, as that would be unbalanced. So, a network of only one-way follows is a red flag.
This brings us to our last tip of checking the engagement on the account. If there is an imbalance in the number of followers an account has and the number of likes it gets on a photo that is a good indicator of a fake account. We know that social networks of people are all connected through strong and weak ties and local bridges. Engagement with an account is an indicator of these ties/bridges. If no one engages with an account, that is a sign there are few genuine ties and that it does not belong in its social network of followers and is likely fake.
While trivial sounding, spotting fake accounts on Instagram is actually an important business issue. Companies looking to market their product turn to Instagram “influencers” to spread the word about their product – this is a very rapidly growing business potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and is quickly replacing traditional advertising practices. By using these tools based off of network structures and strong/weak ties, companies can ensure their money is being well-spent on social media advertising, and not being funneled into fake, ineffective accounts.