MOD & FOD #32 Herringbone, it’s Clem. I need new locks, the skeletons have escaped

[heretoreaditall2019]

But the bots have been going on for days, haven’t they? Convenient he just has noticed & has a problem when they learn we’re actually measuring it.

It’s still going up, it’s out of control. He must have spent a couple of hundred quid on this, there’s no way someone is maliciously buying him bots.

 

[Affiliatemebaby]

But the bots have been going on for days, haven’t they? Convenient he just has noticed & has a problem when they learn we’re actually measuring it.

It’s still going up, it’s out of control. He must have spent a couple of hundred quid on this, there’s no way someone is maliciously buying him bots.

Just what I was going to post. I had a quick look earlier and I got bored of scrolling (really really fast) through his followers before I got anywhere near a ‘real’ account. It’s been going on for a long long time. I hope your ‘as it happens’ stats are showing all that deleting he’s doing?

 

[istapp]

i'm not sure it was him buying now... i think it might be a genius move to duck with them, knowing that we're paying attention. he hasn't had form on buying followers before - just likes (as our excellent analysis squad established). of course it's desperate times chez hooper so... who knows. maybe a little bot bump didn't seem like a bad idea at the time...

 

[HollaBallers]

Excellent work you beautiful bastards - watching the back pedaling is like a slo-mo car crash xxx

 

[Affiliatemebaby]

i'm not sure it was him buying now... i think it might be a genius move to duck with them, knowing that we're paying attention. he hasn't had form on buying followers before - just likes (as our excellent analysis squad established). of course it's desperate times chez hooper so... who knows. maybe a little bot bump didn't seem like a bad idea at the time...

He’s had no new followers that weren’t bots for a very long time.

 

[EddieBeds]

Is it wrong that I really want a tv program made about this?! Who would play Slymon and Gimmie?!

Timmy Mallet for Slymon? Not sure about Gimmie...she’d want/expect someone really highbrow but someone like Jamie Winstone - putting on the faux accent then slipping back into a normal accent to show the two sides to Gimmie.
ETA: That isn’t meant to be a slight on Jamie Winstone

 

[istapp]

He’s had no new followers that weren’t bots for a very long time.

yeah... i just wonder what the nature of instagram is when you have this many 'followers'. i get followed by bots. maybe the m-i-l reads here and bought him some as a 'gift' in return for the table tennis lack of thank you!!

 

[Emmadale]

Is he actually Dominic Cummings?!

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

He’ll pretend it’s us from this thread because he’s thick. Nothing I’ve done is hacking - I’m not even logged into my Instagram when scraping these numbers much less his.

The script is written in Python using Selenium (triggers web browser like a person) and BeautifulSoup (helps you handle HTML and Json and make it “human readable”) modules alongside another json module & a time module (to sleep my script so insta don’t block my bot), and a random module (to generate random numbers to sleep). Python’s own website has guidance on how to write insta bots, it’s a pretty standard project and definitely not malicious.

What I’m doing is automating what any human can do. Open his insta (or yours, or anyone’s) and view source. In chrome it’s view > developer > view source. There’s different bits of meta data but the one I’m interested in is userInteractionCount

Where you can see his follower count is now 963,306. My script grabs that chunk, cleans it up, and saves it to a .tsv saved locally on my laptop. It “sleeps” for a randomised period, and loops back through the list.

I’ve got a list of users the script is running through and none of them have experienced the bots that someone has allegedly bought. So no he’s not being targeted by Russia

Also this script is a bastard that I’m still working on bettering, to send it to an actual database on my server rather than a locally hosted .tsv, largely so I can turn my bleeping laptop off, so I’m not certainly not capable of running an army of Russian teen bots sadly

 

[istapp]

100% @heretoreaditall2019 - what you are doing is awesome but it ain't hacking.

 

[EddieBeds]

i'm not sure it was him buying now... i think it might be a genius move to duck with them, knowing that we're paying attention. he hasn't had form on buying followers before - just likes (as our excellent analysis squad established). of course it's desperate times chez hooper so... who knows. maybe a little bot bump didn't seem like a bad idea at the time...

My understanding was that he’d bought bots on his own page previously....some of which resulted in creepy comments about the twins? I don’t get what anyone would gain by maliciously buying House of Horrors any bots? You’d have to do so in a ridiculous high number surely for it to do any damage in terms of discrediting the account and why would you want spend money doing so if you don’t like them?

 

[Lumpfish]

They must be going crazy trying to delete all the comments, it’s so obvious as the comment under the post says something like 196 comments but when you click they’ve all disappeared

 

[Titfer]

Yay! Simon must've been bored/jealous of the smock/sling chat too and decided to give us something about him to talk about

 

[ILoveUnicorns]

Maybe clem and sly need a little chat, maybe she is messing with him and doing all the deleting and not buying without his knowledge we know how sneaky she can be!!

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

Where is our @Dogmuck, I feel like this is her renaissance of content

Also wait til he finds out about social listening - brands pay hundreds of thousands for work like this, scraping social data. You’re getting pro bono work hun you love that tit! Sorry it’s not the spindles though x

 

[istapp]

My understanding was that he’d bought bots on his own page previously....some of which resulted in creepy comments about the twins? I don’t get what anyone would gain by maliciously buying House of Horrors any bots? You’d have to do so in a ridiculous high number surely for it to do any damage in terms of discrediting the account and why would you want spend money doing so if you don’t like them?

£27 for 5000 obviously fake followers to discredit someone you actively dislike? not impossible...
(i just think it would be a fun twist. i know it's more likely that house of ego shot themselves in the foot AGAIN).

 

[Affiliatemebaby]

£27 for 5000 obviously fake followers to discredit someone you actively dislike? not impossible...

HoH’s net follower gain today was about 80 with no visible plummet in the last 24 hours (because I’ve been a nerd and looking). So you’d have to have been tracking the numbers verrrry closely and then jump in to buy the followers at exactly the right moment. OR they bought some bots.

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

My understanding was that he’d bought bots on his own page previously....some of which resulted in creepy comments about the twins? I don’t get what anyone would gain by maliciously buying House of Horrors any bots? You’d have to do so in a ridiculous high number surely for it to do any damage in terms of discrediting the account and why would you want spend money doing so if you don’t like them?

The creepy comments usually come from international organic coverage I believe. They seem real because they tend to know the names & features

And tit I didn’t know it was as cheap as £27 for 5k?!

 

[RayanneGraff]

His excuse that he’s been hacked...Is that the influencer version of ‘the dog ate my homework’?!

 

[EddieBeds]

£27 for 5000 obviously fake followers to discredit someone you actively dislike? not impossible...
(i just think it would be a fun twist. i know it's more likely that house of ego shot themselves in the foot AGAIN).

Like @heretoreaditall2019 has said I didn’t realise it was that little to buy that many followers...that would be pocket money to some to piss the SODs off. I get your point it would make for a fun twist but I just don’t buy it....the timing is so convenient and if they’ve been reading here they’d convince themselves that @heretoreaditall2019 amazing work was hacking (it isn’t!) and think they’d stumbled across a cast iron excuse....or maybe I’m to cynical?

The creepy comments usually come from international organic coverage I believe. They seem real because they tend to know the names & features

And tit I didn’t know it was as cheap as £27 for 5k?!

Urgh I didn’t realise those comments came from organic coverage . Where is @Dogmuck - we need your insights!