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Rooting Out #NoFilter Frauds on Instagram


July 1, 2013 | Andy Cush

File under: “things you didn’t know you needed an app for.” Actually, file under “things you don’t need an app for, but, if the app exists anyway, you might as well mess around with it a little bit.” Presenting Filter Fakers, a Tumblr bot that automatically posts #nofilter-tagged Instagram filters that, you know, aren’t actually #nofilter.

Why go to the trouble? Because we need transparency and honesty in our social media, damnit! Everything everyone posts to Facebook and Twitter is 100% truthful and #real, right? Right??

But how? Some helpful Verge commenters point to the Instagram API, which allows third-party web clients like Statigram and Gramfeed to display which filter a photo used. Filter Fakers presumably searches for #nofilter tagged photos, checks them against the API data to see whether a filter was used, and posting the offending examples to Tumblr.

To an untrained eye, a few of these appear to be incorrect, though. No obvious evidence of Valencia in action here, for example, or Kelvin here. But no matter. These filthy, lying frauds must be exposed!