Ok, I have to rant about something completely unrelated to anything going on in the world. I’ve been trying not to because there is so much going on that it seems selfish to rant about it, but I need to get it off my chest. I found out a little over a month ago that someone I used to work with/compete for freelance contracts with has been intentionally sabotaging my career for months so that they could eliminate me as a competitor for contracts. This is someone I thought of as a friend. They have also been sabotaging two of my friends. Pre-pandemic we all worked within the same circle of freelancers. Now only one of us has been getting contract offers. One of them had their LinkedIn disabled due to this person’s sabotage. The other had to delete their Instagram after it was disabled and they also had an issue with their upwork profile. For me they have been sending hundreds (possibly more) fake followers to my Instagram account to hurt my credibility so they would be viewed more favorably in comparison to me, because shit like engagement matters to contractors and committees. The scary thing about this is that literally anybody can send fake followers, and bots to literally any public Instagram account with seemingly no repercussions at all. Yet the person on the receiving end could unwillingly be in breach of instagram’s user agreement and get banned. I’ve tried to reach out to Instagram regarding how this negatively affects any rank in their algorithm and for guidance to remedy the situation, but only received canned responses redirecting me to their “support” page, which frankly had no real help for me. Basically it is recommended to make your account private so that you can have full control over who can follow you. The problem with this is that it both stifles growth and prevents any potential employer/paid partner from accessing your page as well. I have since started manually parsing through thousands of followers trying to decipher real from fake and/or inactive and manually removing almost all but currently active followers. I don’t know how long this has been going on for or how many I need to remove, but I would rather have a smaller audience that actually cares about what I post actually being able to see them opposed to a large meaningless number that somehow prevents instagram’s algorithm from even displaying my posts to my followers. Yes, manually doing this is seemingly the only option. And yes this could take a while, and yet another yes, I had debated just deleting my Instagram, but in today’s atmosphere not having one actually seems to hurt my job prospects, potential partners, and frankly web sales. So if you’ve noticed me posting a lot less or wondering how I’m doing these days, here you go. This has been unbelievably frustrating and I feel completely betrayed by someone I genuinely thought was a friend. I get it, this pandemic has hurt most people’s income in some way or another but I can’t understand intentionally screwing people over like that; maybe I’m wired different.
Hi!
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