Julio del Mar: How to build an Instagram influencer bot
Can you tell the difference between a human Instagram account and a bot account? How many influencers bots are you actually following? To find some answers to my questions, I created Julio Del Mar: a virtual photographer that is managing his own Instagram account, independently from humans. Julio does not need human interaction to grow, besides the electricity to run a machine, equal to about $5/ month.
Every day, Julio Del Mar entertains his followers with a new post, that he creates by himself, on his Instagram account.
As his last name suggests, Julio is a virtual photographer with one unique passion: the ocean.
How does it work?
In the following, I will explain how I made him work, for more technical details check my python code on GitHub.
1. Topic
Being passionate about the ocean and its creatures, Julio has a pool of keywords (e.g. “sea”, “ocean” etc.) that he can use, to define his daily topic.
2. Photo
He would first go to unsplash.com, where he would input his keyword of the day (e.g. “ocean”), get a list of pictures, and download one of them.
3. Quote
Right after, with the same keyword, he would browse brainyquote.com, and pick one quote that is inline with his picture.
4. Hashatgs
Two options are available: all-hashtag.com and displaypurposes.com.
- all-hashtag.com: Julio would visit all-hashtag.com, to generate 30 random tags based on his keyword.
- displaypurposes.com: Julio would visit displaypurposes.com, input all keywords and select 30 random tags.
5. Post!
Based on Instagram Analytics, Julio would find the best posting time for his audience. At that time, Julio will eventually wrap his photo, quote and tags in a very professional and fashionable Instagram post.
6. Interaction
Julio is also interacting regularly with other Instagram accounts, both humans and bots, that have a common interests for photography and/or for the Ocean. He carries on his interaction and build his network through InstaPy.
7. Technical details
The all procedure is running on a simple linux server that costs 5$ per month. The bot is open source and my python code can be found on my Github, feel free to use it and improve it. The linux server I am using is DigitalOcean (here is my referral code to get 100$ to open a new account: https://m.do.co/c/e369d2a014c3).
Would you engage with Julio’s posts?
It is actually hard to distinguish whether an account is managed by a bot or a human being. How many likes and comments do you get on your Instagram account every day? Have you realized that most of those interactions are not human driven?
In general, most of the big Instagram accounts, especially businesses, have been automated in some way. Automated, in this context, means that a procedure, more or less intelligent, has been created to eliminate manual and repetitive activities, such as posting, following, commenting and liking posts, with the intention to grow a social network.
When a person, instead of a bot, is spending time doing the above mentioned activities, I would call this behavior human automation: a less efficient version of automation.
“If a robot can do better you have to think about it.” Jack Ma
To be able to manage a big influencer’s account, several repetitive actions are needed all day long. These kind of activities can easily be replicated by a bot, as they do not require any human typical characteristics, e.g. emotions.
Even though Instagram keeps trying to identify bot behaviors, it still uses robots to accomplish that task. The consequence is a “war” between robots: more intelligent robots are eventually being created to fight the Instagram’s defense. A bot war is far from a social network, which is supposed to enhance interaction among humans! Probably the real problem (or the threat) is not related to the bots, but to the concept of social media as it is today.
Nevertheless, still many humans follow Instagram influencers. What is an Instagram influencer? how many people and bots are behind an influencers’s account? Are we being influenced by humans or bots?
Influencer: “Someone who affects or changes the way that other people behave, for example through their use of social media” (Cambridge Dictionary).
