On Instagram, Iranian feminist groups are targeted by bots

For months i groups Iranians who deal with the rights of women they come stalked by bots following their accounts Instagram, in an attempt to undermine the awareness and digital dissemination operations carried out by organizations. Activists report that despite requests for intervention made repeatedly to Halfwhich controls Instagram, millions of fake followers continue to target millions tens of organizations operating in Iran and other parts of the world.

The targeted bot campaignswhich allow a profile to gain tens of thousands of new followers on social networks in a single day, have gained momentum just as the Iranian government works to counter the widespread dissent in the country linked to a number of pressing social issues, including feminist ones. Women’s rights activists claim to have suffered particularly aggressive repression by the government in recent months, including cases of police surveillance that culminated in arrests. On the occasion of the National Day of Hijab and Chastity, which is celebrated on July 12, several women in the country participated in protests related to the hashtag # No2Hijab, in some cases moving their hijabs to uncover their hair. in others by removing them altogether.

Instagram has proven to be a key communication platform for feminist activists, being one of the few accessible and uncensored international social media in the Iran’s tightly controlled digital landscape. “More and more people are reacting against using the hijab right now; it is an unprecedented phenomenon and I believe the government feels threatened by the women’s rights movement – says Firuzeh Mahmoudi, executive director of United for Iran, one of the organizations targeted by Instagram bots -. Whatever is happening with these bots, purchased systematically to target our Instagram pages, it is absolutely no coincidence, in my opinion. About thirty local Iranian women’s rights groups and forty in the rest of the world have been attacked in this way“.

The tactics of bots

Despite bot campaigns coincide with the interests of the Iranian regimethose responsible have not yet been identified. The attacks are in some ways subtle, because they don’t involve massive amounts of malicious comments or attempts to completely bury the pages. Rather, according to activists, Instagram pages – which often have a few thousand followers – suddenly gain tens of thousands within hours. New follower accounts have names composed of strings of consonants and meaningless numbers. Mahmoudi cites as an example one of the pages dedicated to United for Iran, which went from a constant average of about 27 thousand followers to 70 thousand overnight. Other activists have reported similar stories, according to which their accounts have seen tens of thousands of followers arrive in a few hours, only to regain and lose followers in the measure of a few thousand at a time.

These huge fluctuations in the number of followers alter the statistics accessible to page administrators, and make it difficult to determine whether they are really reaching real followers with posts and stories published by their accounts. Activists also found that bot accounts individually report specific posts to Instagram to have them deleted.