"Why Some of Instagram's Biggest Memers Are Locking Their Accounts"
Atlantic:
Over the past six months, some of Instagram’s biggest meme pages—like Shithead Steve . . . have locked down their accounts, forcing non-followers to request access in order to view their content.
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Reid Hailey, the founder of Doing Things, a media company that manages a network of Instagram pages with a collective 14 million followers, says that around 75 percent of the accounts he oversees are set to private. “If you’re public, people just always see your stuff and they don’t feel the need to follow you,” he says. Hailey sees it as partial relief for stagnant follower counts: “It didn’t really become a mainstream thing until the algorithm started hitting hard I would say about six months ago or so. People are hurting for growth. A lot of meme pages aren’t really growing.”
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“It’s a frowned-upon practice in the meme-page community because it makes your account feel far less genuine,”
Related:
The Twitch Streamers Who Spend Years Broadcasting to No One
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“I tried the follow4follow technique… but no one ever took the next step and watched my channel,” Twitch user Flummoxkid says. “Nothing but a bunch of hollow follows.
And:
Recently at the Anaheim Convention Center, about 50 people entered a room decorated as a stylish lounge for a speed dating event. They moved from table to table every 20 minutes, exchanging small talk and getting to know each other.
But the participants were not looking for love. They were YouTube stars and marketing executives from companies like Uber and Amazon seeking an advertising union.
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Adam Wescott, a partner and co-founder of Select Management Group, an agency that manages numerous top YouTube performers, said one advertiser had stipulated the amount of cleavage that one of his clients could show. When that creator posted an Instagram photo — unrelated to the advertiser’s campaign — with more than the permissible cleavage, Mr. Wescott had to tell her to take down the photo.
Increasingly, he wants the same right for his clients because they have just as much to lose if a company becomes embroiled in scandal, such as the right to take down a video sponsored by a company if that brand’s executives are caught sexually harassing staff.
