App update prevents users going viral on Instagram by pretending to be in Singapore

Instagrammers around the world recently discovered a quick and easy way to gain greater attention and increase the likelihood of going viral -- tagging their images as if they were in Singapore.

A flaw in Instagram's algorithms meant that images geotagged on the Malaysian island were more likely to be picked to be featured on the Explore page. Greater publicity equals greater views equals viral status equals win. Or at least it did.

People browsing images posted on Instagram noticed that a strange number of people seemed to have suddenly relocated to Singapore. The ploy was picked up by a number of high-profile users, and it didn’t take long for the hoi polloi to get in on the action.

But with so many people taking advantage of the boost switching countries brought, it didn’t take long for Instagram to notice what was happening and do something about it. After the initial confusion the tagging caused, some Instagrammers were annoyed that some users were unfairly playing the system. Now that a patch has been rolled out, the cheat has been killed -- unless there are any other loopholes to exploit in Instagram's algorithms, that is...

Image credit: ArthurStock / Shutterstock