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Last updated on July 5th, 2024 at 12:06 pm
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So as we know many people or brands like to hold giveaways. Well this isn’t anything new yet there have been some interesting things happen on social media lately. Especially on Instagram.
I know people host giveaways to try to gain follower or even just to share something with their core follower group. Again that’s great but things are starting to get a bit tricky.
Cloning is going on
I’ve noticed lately that cloning of accounts has been happen to those who are having giveaways. Cloning is when someone takes your photo and creates a similar handle as ours or a exact handle with an added letter or symbol.
I’ve alerted a few profiles about these practices. It doesn’t matter if your a content creator or a brand I’ve seen this happen to both.
The worst part of all this is that Instagram freezes both accounts so the authentic profile or brand is stuck. One profile spent roughly 2 months without being able to post to their account. You can read more about the imposter or impersonator info via Instagram’s support page on the topic.
another thing about giveaways
I was checking out Instagram’s terms of service today and noticed that giveaways have always been sort of post at your own risk. This is stated clearly in the promotions guidelines (source Instagram support page).
Since Instagram doesn’t condone or promote brands unless they are paid ads they don’t offer much protection to those who opt to host a giveaway. It’s also hard to know of some people who are hosting the giveaway are trying to gain followers quickly or if they are part of a follow group promotion.
Those are other key factors as well but overall Instagram isn’t all that thrilled by giveaways. As being someone who’s hosted a few giveaways they ae a lot of work. Some people even have upset followers direct message them complaining that they deserved to win the prize.
The rumor is….
I happened to see a post from a content creator based in the UK. This creator stated that giveaways may soon cause issues for profiles.
Is this true? I can’t state it is because I haven’t been able to find any exact phrasing in Instagram’s terms of service or service change updates. That’s a long winded I don’t know. It could be a ploy or tactic to pause giveaways from small profiles or non-brand profiles for a while. But we will see. This content creator also stated that other consequences such as possibly losing your Instagram account may be on the horizon.
Again do I believe this rumor (Or whatever you’d like to call it) I can’t say I fully do. I don’t think brands will lose their accounts for trying to share products with customers or followers. Yet I could see something coming up for a small content creator or an independent business.
Is this right? No but as we know Instagram and Facebook look out for themselves not their users.
You can see the terms of service update taking effect 12/20/2020 to see if I missed the info.
is it worth having a giveaway?
That will be something only you can decide upon. I know some people have a large uptick in followers thanks to giveaways. Others have a flood only for them to unfollow when the giveaway is over.
What do you all think about this possible new change? Is it worth the risk?
