[notahacker]

> I know if I like too many photos on Instagram, they will block me temporarily, and if I repeat it within certain period, they can ban me for a few days and so on. Having these thresholds and other rules spelled out would be helpful to users

It would be far more helpful to spammers, who could then set all their bots to send threshold - 1 likes and invitations than the average user who rarely ever considers liking enough stuff to trigger it (and is able to take the hint and just not like stuff as much if they do get a warning). Plus in practice it's probably not just a simple threshold, but a function weighted by timing and topics and relatedness of accounts and which is completely unintelligible to the average person (but potentially informative to more advanced spambot developers).

[ipaddr]

Do you not think these limits are being tested and shared already? I ran into a temporary ig ban when getting rid of a number of people I followed. When I searched for answers the limits were everywhere being discussed.

Before bug bounty programs this was the reason given for not disclosing security issues. All it did was keep the issues underground not fixed and allowed security bugs to exist forever.

[netr0ute]

Then make the thresholds low enough so that spam bots are totally ineffective by staying below the threshold.

[alpaca128]

If you lower the threshold far enough you'll also hit some of the most active users.

[Aeolun]

True, but they’ll know exactly what’s up.