Phone Farm Instagram Account Bans: Am I Crazy?

First off, I'm sorry that you got scammed. I hope you find a resolution, or maybe this is one of those 'hard lessons' that make you stronger and smarter.

To begin - You kinda got scammed. Phone automation is a complication job. But what is more complicated is ... Instagram.

A coder maybe 'great' at coding phone automations whilst at the same time truly 'suck' at understanding the megalodon that is Instagram. I think this is the mistake you've landed in.

Just to clear the floor, I have some points. This is coming from someone who's running a phone farm on custom software (in-house dev, so don't ask for contacts or stuff). I won't disclose the amount of phones or profiles for privacy but it's a decent sized operation.

#1 - Phone farm is indeed a great way for automation. It can be a breeze if done right. And give you lots of superpowers in ways most people just cannot imagine.
#2 - I get close to 0% ban rate on my profiles, closing in on 2 year anniversary of my farm. Using a phone farm the correct way really does mean you get 0 bans. This is first hand experience.

Now, lets talk about mistakes that I would assume you're making (assume being the keyword here)

#1 - Warm-up is crucial. No matter what. If you create an account and starting posting right away, that is risky AF. I've done months of R&D with my team before I started my farm, and we realized once you setup the account, it's best not to post or maybe post a few hours later (after warm-up), and make it just one post.
#2 - Creating accounts itself is hard. If you're leaking your OS/5G/Hardware data, you're fucked. And your coder is a noob. If you're using cloned apps that are spoofed hiding every possible hardware data, device integrity data, then you have a 'chance'. On top of that, using mobile numbers instead of emails gives a far better trust score, so go that route. Later, add a Gmail email, again, better trust score.
#3 - Warm-up, warm-up and warm-up. BUT - and this is a big one ... with 'HUMAN EMULATION'. Make the profiles run Instagram like a human would. Do this ... (its what we did) ... record yourself using Instagram for an hour. Just chilling. And watch that recording. What do you do? Take notes. And then coder builds emulation around that. There's 1000+ touch points that go into 'human emulation'. Without this, you're just asking to be banned.

Everything can be 'cracked', it's just that your coder has no experience from the way you're describing things. If he said 'posting' is 'warm-up'. Fuck.
Well damn. At this point I’m not sure what the best route is. I need someone to come in and check out the code and see. I have it all installed locally.

I’m hoping it’s in some way salvageable or at least a good starting point that needs to be updated with an automated warm up process/caltcha solver, which hopefully I can have integrated from someone on BHW.

I really tried to search BHW for months to find the right person, and thought I had.

Not sure what to do now.
 
First off, I'm sorry that you got scammed. I hope you find a resolution, or maybe this is one of those 'hard lessons' that make you stronger and smarter.

To begin - You kinda got scammed. Phone automation is a complication job. But what is more complicated is ... Instagram.

A coder maybe 'great' at coding phone automations whilst at the same time truly 'suck' at understanding the megalodon that is Instagram. I think this is the mistake you've landed in.

Just to clear the floor, I have some points. This is coming from someone who's running a phone farm on custom software (in-house dev, so don't ask for contacts or stuff). I won't disclose the amount of phones or profiles for privacy but it's a decent sized operation.

#1 - Phone farm is indeed a great way for automation. It can be a breeze if done right. And give you lots of superpowers in ways most people just cannot imagine.
#2 - I get close to 0% ban rate on my profiles, closing in on 2 year anniversary of my farm. Using a phone farm the correct way really does mean you get 0 bans. This is first hand experience.

Now, lets talk about mistakes that I would assume you're making (assume being the keyword here)

#1 - Warm-up is crucial. No matter what. If you create an account and starting posting right away, that is risky AF. I've done months of R&D with my team before I started my farm, and we realized once you setup the account, it's best not to post or maybe post a few hours later (after warm-up), and make it just one post.
#2 - Creating accounts itself is hard. If you're leaking your OS/5G/Hardware data, you're fucked. And your coder is a noob. If you're using cloned apps that are spoofed hiding every possible hardware data, device integrity data, then you have a 'chance'. On top of that, using mobile numbers instead of emails gives a far better trust score, so go that route. Later, add a Gmail email, again, better trust score.
#3 - Warm-up, warm-up and warm-up. BUT - and this is a big one ... with 'HUMAN EMULATION'. Make the profiles run Instagram like a human would. Do this ... (its what we did) ... record yourself using Instagram for an hour. Just chilling. And watch that recording. What do you do? Take notes. And then coder builds emulation around that. There's 1000+ touch points that go into 'human emulation'. Without this, you're just asking to be banned.

Everything can be 'cracked', it's just that your coder has no experience from the way you're describing things. If he said 'posting' is 'warm-up'. Fuck.
Yeah , this. People do not want to accept that this stuff is seriously hard, thisngoes way beyond the old python account scripts and it's expensive.

Btw someone said airplane mode toggle, while this is okay, it will not work if the platform has a serious look.
 
Well damn. At this point I’m not sure what the best route is. I need someone to come in and check out the code and see. I have it all installed locally.

I’m hoping it’s in some way salvageable or at least a good starting point that needs to be updated with an automated warm up process/caltcha solver, which hopefully I can have integrated from someone on BHW.

I really tried to search BHW for months to find the right person, and thought I had.

Not sure what to do now.

No. Don't let it put you down. Its okay. If only I counted the money I burned trying to learn stuff, I'd get depressed. Haha. We learn and we move forward. And we make so much more money that our 'mistakes' don't count.

I can't tell you if it's salvageable or not. Most likely it's not. These bots aren't like a website that someone can come in and 'fix' a few things and viola, it's perfect.

And I doubt your coder is so professional that he's done this in such a clean manner with proper documentations, changelogs, that anyone can come and pick up from where he left. If he did, then there is a chance.

The crucial part to understand is, is there anything worth salvaging? If he sold you an account creation bot, and it has a 100% ban rate, then this requires a lot of work.

If the coder is somehow 'good' and did a lazy job on your case, maybe he can spend a few days and fix it for good. Otherwise, ask for refund. Most likely he told you this a custom job, where all he did was take an old ready made script and sold it to you making it appear he did some 'work'.
 
Well damn. At this point I’m not sure what the best route is. I need someone to come in and check out the code and see. I have it all installed locally.

I’m hoping it’s in some way salvageable or at least a good starting point that needs to be updated with an automated warm up process/caltcha solver, which hopefully I can have integrated from someone on BHW.

I really tried to search BHW for months to find the right person, and thought I had.

Not sure what to do now.
PM me coder details I'll take a look and give you my opinion.
 
Instagram is doing a lot of sweeps, and I'm just like you; many Instagram accounts have been disabled. If it's a clone account, you can't appeal, so just accept it and create a new account.
This kind of storm only happens occasionally.
 
You’re not crazy—phone farms trigger Instagram’s fraud systems due to repeated logins, shared IPs, and device fingerprints.
 
some of the replies here are very rash and pouchy..... it all comes down to creation OP.. some days are good some arent. what is the creation process like?
 
You can get VA's to do the Captcha. There are many agencies that do that where they get them to enter the codes.
 
At this point, the question isn’t how to fix this setup but whether it’s worth fixing. Phone farms stopped being forgiving years ago, and most people burning money now are fighting signals they can’t see or suppress.
 
Haha, i was saying. Appium is the issue bro, we do have 20 iPhones and 0 issues :)
 
Haha, i was saying. Appium is the issue bro, we do have 20 iPhones and 0 issues :)
You can't possible remotely debug and make a confident statement like this not knowing their set up and code.

Better just day something like Appium looks like something that might be one of the weak links in this.

We're at a point on this forum where some better ai generated responses are more valuable than most user inputs (and the bad gtp replies)
 
Haha, i was saying. Appium is the issue bro, we do have 20 iPhones and 0 issues :)
Why Appium? I heard it's great for automating mobile devices. Ok, and what alternatives then would u recommend :)
 
I recently spent $7,500 on a phone farm setup from someone on here, and we’re about two weeks in, but it’s been having consistent issues the entire time.

The setup is 3 iPhone 7s, each connected to T-Mobile. The provider configured everything using Dopamine / Sileo / Crane along with Appium for automation.

Overall, the automation seems well-built, but during the first ~10 days it had problems like posting multiple times on the same account or getting stuck on random screens, which would stall the workflow. Those issues have mostly stopped now… but the bigger issue is that almost every account is getting banned.

He built two automations:
  1. Account creation automation (creates an account and makes one post, then moves to the next account)
  2. Posting automation
He recommended running 100 IG accounts per phone, since posting 2x/day across that many accounts takes roughly 24 hours to cycle through everything.

For content, we’re using a mix of pre-designed templates and a repurposing tool (TikFusion) to generate variations and avoid duplication flags. But even with that, we’re still losing accounts. I even tested using 100 completely random (and unique) videos from my personal camera roll, and the accounts were still getting flagged 20–30 minutes after posting.

When I say “banned,” I mean Instagram starts forcing a CAPTCHA / “verify you’re human” prompt, and the accounts quickly get disabled afterward.

At this point, my gut says it’s something with the setup itself—possibly the automation behavior, device fingerprinting, or the way it’s rotating IPs. The provider is basically implying it’s on us to troubleshoot, but I paid $7,500 and this has been happening since day one. He tried to say it was the content’s fault at first, so that’s why I ran the experiment of posting my own random personal videos, and the same thing happened.

It’s extremely frustrating to spend $7.5k and follow every single step they tell you, then have them tell you it’s essentially your fault and to figure it out.

If anyone has any ideas on what could be causing this (or how to stabilize it), I’d really appreciate the help. Thanks in advance.
Reach me please
 
At this point, the question isn’t how to fix this setup but whether it’s worth fixing. Phone farms stopped being forgiving years ago, and most people burning money now are fighting signals they can’t see or suppress.
Are you saying that his setup is wrong? Or phone farming isn't worth it anymore?
 
What about using google pixel phones with graphene OS instead?
 
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