Member-only story
When seeing who viewed my Instagram stories, I keep seeing several random Russian users watching my stories.
This is odd, as I don’t ever find myself discussing politics — American or Russian. I have not visited Russia or posted about their food.
I did binge watch “Chernobyl” and “Stranger Things” Season 3.
Apparently, I am not the only one who has Russian accounts watching my stories.
TechCrunch’s very own director of events, Leslie Hitchcock, flagged the issue— complaining of “eerie” views on her Instagram Stories in the last couple of months from random Russian accounts. Some seemed like genuine accounts (such as artists with several thousand followers) and others simply “weird” looking.
There are discussions on Reddit titled, “Lots of rando Russian users suddenly viewing my stories on Instagram. Why?”
Instagram is aware of the issue and Is trying to fix it.
Instagram stated this inauthentic activity is not related to misinformation campaigns, but is rather a new growth hacking tactic — which involves accounts paying third parties to try to boost their profile via fake likes, followers and comments (in this case by generating inauthentic activity by watching the Instagram Stories of people they have no…
