I figured out who the random accounts watching my Instagram Stories were
Recently, I started seeing a lot of Instagram Story visitors on my meagerly visited Instagram page. As I do with all questions, I turned to Google for some answers, and found out my problem wasn’t as rare as I thought.
I read through what these articles had to say, and most of them came to the general consensus that these are bots, who watch your story in the hopes that you’ll see them watching, and follow their account in return.
It didn’t make much sense to me. On my blog’s Instagram (@fluentlyforward), I really don’t interact with many accounts on there. I only have like, 100 followers, and it just struck me as strange that people (okay, bots) would be able to find an account as small as mine.
But then a few weeks later, my friend texted me with some interesting information.
I went to the website, and sure enough, you can anonymously view public Instagram stories. (I’m still waiting for the day that all private accounts can be made public, but alas…)
So it turns out that there are essentially two reasons for “fake” followers watching your stories. The first reason is summed up really well in the below video: people are paying services to “get them more followers” and the services do this by watching other people’s stories.
When accounts that are verified, or have thousands and thousands of followers look at your stories, this is probably what’s going on.
The second option (and, what it was in my case) is that a few determined people are trying to see what you put on your Instagram stories without giving away their username, so they’re using one of these storiesig.com, etc, sites to watch what you post.
For a couple weeks now, I’ve been blocking the bots and “determined folk” who keep viewing my stories using others accounts. We’re coming into 2020, baby, I can’t have that robotic Russian energy hanging around me as I enter the New Year!
In all honesty, I do welcome stalking. (You can even see in the above text message that my friends literally come to me with advice and questions about this).
I just think if you’re going to stalk someone, put in the extra effort and make a fake account for years, put it on private and change your username and photo, and then follow that person! This is much easier because you’ll then have full access to their entire page and they’ll be less likely to block you. I explain it all in my super creepy social media blog post below.
All’s fair in love and Instagram stalking, as they say!
Let me know if you’ve been noticing this influx of random accounts watching your stories, and how you’re dealing with it. It’s only mildly annoying, but it’s interesting to think of what else will be following this in a few months…
And if you want to follow a real person on Instagram, here’s my page!
Hope everyone is having a great holiday!
S