Instagram accounts fuel Ceuta crisis with paid advice for help to cross

The accounts have managed to manipulate the algorithms on major social media sites by sharing emotive and hopeful content to gain more traction.

Insiders at the biggest social media companies have previously told me how posts triggering a strong reaction are more likely to go viral.

When I tried to contact some of these profiles using my own account, some of them directed me to the same WhatsApp numbers or email addresses.

My dummy account, Mohammed, was a profile set to private and designed to look similar to the accounts of younger Moroccan people who were liking and commenting on the posts advertising crossings. I followed relevant content, including several of the Haraga profiles, and soon my feed was swamped with videos and content encouraging travel to Ceuta.

There appears to be a wider trend here, where people looking to charge migrants money for advice can easily set up profiles and game social media algorithms.

While there have been Facebook groups and accounts on other major social media sites posting about Ceuta, it was on Instagram where I found the most active and prevalent group of interconnected accounts.

The new-found reach of these profiles, facilitated by Instagram’s algorithms, opens them up to a wider pool of paying clients.

It is yet another example of how gaming an algorithm can fuel real-world harm.