The service is getting increasingly targeted by spammers

Dec 10, 2012 15:03 GMT  ·  By

Instagram is busy with more than just feuding with Twitter these days; it's looking at ways of expanding its audience, with a clear focus on the web for now, but also fixing some of the big problems with Instagram. One of the biggest that hasn't been addressed so far is spam.

As with any popular service, there's plenty of spam on the site. Companies starting up don't have the resources or the expertise to fight spam and it's only after they become big enough to actually attract a lot of spam that they start looking at ways to fight it.

That's what happened with Pinterest and it's true with Instagram as well.

Pinterest has recently revealed that it's deleting most spam accounts from the site in one fell swoop and that its new tools should do a much better job at keeping them from coming back.

When Pinterest announced that it was fighting back in a big way, a lot of people were wondering when Instagram might do the same. It's no surprise then that Instagram has been working on this very thing.

"We've appreciated all of your feedback on spam comments, and we want you to know we're working hard on this to make sure spam doesn't take away from your Instagram experience," Instagram wrote.

"There's no quick fix, but we have a team of engineers working every day to tackle the issue and we hope you'll notice their improvements," it explained.

Users can help fight against spam, they can report posts, comments and images as spam to help Instagram's team move faster. But Instagram is going to have to start moving faster to prevent spam from ever reaching the site and deleting spam accounts very soon after they are created.

One advantage Instagram has over Pinterest is that it now has access to Facebook's spam hunting team and technologies. As the largest site in the world, relying exclusively on user generated content, Facebook knows more about spam than just about anyone else on the web.