Mass Planner Shut Down by Instagram: The End of the Bot Era

Bots have been used on social networks for as long as I can remember. They are a way of growing one’s community without much effort and getting more attention than by doing everything manually. However, it’s not organic, and thus social media companies have tried to shut them down for a while. Instagram recently launched a witch hunt and managed to get Instagress to close down. Yesterday, another big bot service, Mass Planner, was taken down. Is it the end of the bot era?

Mass Planner was certainly the most used service along with Instagress and seeing both of them being shut down by Instagram is a clear statement: the photo-sharing social networking company doesn’t want any automated interaction on their platform, only user activity. This is probably going to change things on the network now that the two biggest bot services are closed.

First, many likes and comments received in the past may have come from bots. So a slight drop in engagement could be noticed. But on the other hand, this will also make content more important than ever. Users will be forced to produce great content to get likes, comments, and shares instead of just relying on an app doing follow/unfollow, like, and comment actions for them.

With recent rumors of Instagram also trying to prevent users from relying on PODs to grow their engagement and visibility, one can wonder if the social network company is really trying to get more organic interaction on their platform or only push users to pay for sponsored posts.