Horny&training’
Porn bots, authenticity, and social automation on Instagram
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13086387 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Elena Pilipets (0000-0003-2955-5926, University of Siegen, corresponding author), Sofia P Caldeira (0000-0001-7681-6952, Universidade Lusófona), Ana Marta M Flores (0000-0002-5078-5534, University of Lisbon) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Pages | 1-21 |
| Publication date | 2024-07-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Porn Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2326-8743 • E-ISSN: 2326-8751 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/23268743.2024.2362166 |
| OpenAlex | W4400778276 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 48 |
This article presents a conceptual and methodological account of a small porn bot network, focusing on its embeddedness within Instagram use. The analysis explores the gendered design of bots as platform-native personas, particularly their capacity to perform within the confines of Instagram's increasingly strict sexual content controls. We address three performative trajectories in the bot-exploited 'Instagrammatics' of identity play, social influence, and attention capture. We argue that a bot programmed to operate with sexual content to generate attention relies on the paradoxical blend of pornographic 'imagination' and social media 'authenticity'. For our analysis, we manually identified 30 porn bot accounts spamming in the comment sections of highly visible Instagram posts (those published by @justinbieber). We then collected associated metadata – bot profile names and images, comments and comment likers, followers and followings, bot content, and links in the bot profile bios. By variously situating and combining these data, we discuss how networked automation taps into the sexualized social scripts imitated by 'artificial' and 'authentic' users alike. Our findings point to how porn bots re-enact gender as a programmed set of instructions, adapting to Instagram's vision of acceptable sexuality and revealing its normative order
Aesthetics · Art · Identity (music · Internet privacy · Media studies · Queer · Social media · Sociology · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology
Spam
Sex and Social Media
If…Then
Instagrammatics and digital methods
The Affordances of Social Media Platforms
Connect With Your Audience! The Relational Labor of Connection
Situated data analysis
The (not so) secret governors of the internet
Programmed Visions
Gender Advertisements
Gender Trouble
Sex in the shadows of celebrity
Sex, power and platform governance
A Deepfake Porn Plot Intended to Silence Me’
Pornographication
Content moderation
Beyond the hashtag
Nipples, memes, and algorithmic failure
Email from Nancy Nutsucker
Sexualized labour in digital culture
Surveillance and capture
Speculative Method and Twitter
To See and Be Seen
For a situational analytics
Visual media analysis for Instagram and other online platforms
Bot, or not? Comparing three methods for detecting social bots in five political discourses
Digital Debris
Instafame
Authenticity Governance and the Market for Social Media Engagements
The Emotional and Financial Impact of De-Platforming on Creators at the Margins
Between the Mundane and the Political
Studying Instagram Beyond Selfies
There's something compelling about real life
Multi-Situated App Studies
Reading Porn
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |