Why Are ‘Porn Stars’ Liking Your Instagram Stories?

There’s no denying the rush of dopamine you get from a social media notification. The thought that someone put in the herculean effort of “liking” your post to get your attention for half a second is at least a little bit flattering. 

Except when that someone might not really be a person. 

Over the past few months, Instagram users have reported an increase in activity from bots on the app. While bots (aka automated accounts that mimic human behavior on social media apps) have occasionally followed and messaged people for years, many of them are now incessantly liking people’s Instagram Stories. So much so that the notifications are more concerning than flattering.

Some of these notifications come from what users call “porn bots” or “sexbots,” because the bots normally have sexy photos, usually of women, as their profile pictures and sometimes have links to fake porn sites on their bios. In other words, they pose as porn stars.

Short for “robot,” internet bots are software programs that execute automated and repetitive tasks. Studies have estimated that about half of today’s internet activity is performed by bots. Bots are used to automate certain tasks, like providing customer service (chatbots) or helping you while you’re online shopping (shopbots). Depending on who’s manning the code, bots can also be used for more malicious purposes.

In last year’s Philippine presidential election, the team behind President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s campaign reportedly used trolls and bots to spread disinformation about his opponent. Twitter suspended more than 300 accounts for violating the company’s platform manipulation and spam policy. 

Bots can also be tools to collect information from people via phishing scams. Last year, cyber attackers hacked the Consumers Association of Singapore and sent thousands of emails attempting to trick people into performing payment transactions relating to their complaints.

That’s some serious stuff… So why are fake porn stars liking your Instagram Stories? 

“Liking an Instagram [Story], while it may seem like an inconspicuous move, is actually a tried-and-true tactic that bot accounts deploy to appear legitimate,” Mara Miano, a cybersecurity expert from online trust and safety firm ActiveFence, told VICE. 

According to Miano, bots are coded to like Instagram Stories. It’s important for bots to do so because liking stories is an “authentic behavior” on Instagram, meaning real people do it. “Without this basic level of activity, monitoring systems would be more likely to identify these accounts as bots,” said Miano. 

Meta, Instagram’s parent company, told BuzzFeed News that the company blocks millions of spam accounts every day.

In that light, some bots may be liking your Stories just to stay alive, so to speak. As to what they’re trying to stay alive for—that could be any number of things.

Miano said that bots are often created by third-party services to automate social media likes, comments, and follows for marketing purposes. In some cases, the bots are coded to target a particular demographic or are designed to engage with particular topics or hashtags. But these porn bots might just be bots gone rogue. 

“I did not find any indication of a large, coordinated threat group operating these spam bots, or a patterned attack behavior—at least not yet,” said Miano.

She added that when a bot network becomes buggy (likely because it’s no longer being managed), the bots can start behaving anomalously, like zombies walking around aimlessly. 

“Hypothetically, a criminal may manipulate these scripts and start adding malicious elements to the bots, such as phishing links,” said Miano, though she can’t say for sure this is what’s happening with the recent rise of porn bots. 

Some of these porn bots do have links in their bios. The links lead to haphazard websites that imply porn after a few clicks.

Some sites then bait users into providing personal information like their email addresses, before supposedly unlocking the porn. This scheme is similar to the spam texts that offered Filipinos high-paying jobs and asked for their bank details.

Miano advised people to stay safe online by making their accounts private. If you need to maintain a public persona, refrain from posting personal information on your accounts. Use a strong password and apply multi-factor authentication. Don’t click on links from unknown or suspicious sources. 

But if the bots are really bothering you, Miano offered another solution:

“If you’re an Instagram user and you’re uncomfortable receiving likes from porn bots, we recommend that you report the account. The flag will be channeled into Instagram's systems for analysis, which could potentially lead to the removal of the account.” 

Follow Romano Santos on Instagram.