Facing a deluge of bot attacks and takedowns, Iranian feminists and political protesters say Instagram is silencing them
About a month ago, the UK-based Iranian women’s rights activist Samaneh Savadi published a post on her popular Instagram account about paternal postpartum depression. Shortly after, she noticed an uptick in follow requests.
At first, Savadi, who regularly publishes feminist and gender-related content on her account, was pleased. But then, she took a closer look at the recently added accounts. Many of them looked like bots: they had pseudonyms, newly created Instagram pages, no posts. Soon, the requests started overwhelming her page — up to 100 a minute.
“It was never-ending,” Savadi recalled. She briefly switched her page to private, but she didn’t want this deluge of suspicious new followers to keep her from speaking out. Soon, she made her page public again and was quickly inundated with harassing messages and new followers.
It wasn’t just Savadi’s page that saw strange activity. Other Iranian feminist-focused accounts soon started reporting the same pattern of events — a surge in follow requests and messages – beginning at roughly the same time in mid-May.