How do I report spam on Instagram?

Tap the three dots on the post, comment, message or profile, choose Report, and pick the spam or scam reason. Reporting the item itself gives the reviewer the evidence.

How do I remove fake followers on Instagram?

Open Followers and use Flagged for review. Remove all clears the flagged accounts at once, and they are not notified. It works on public accounts.

Will the spammer know I reported them?

No. Instagram says the account you report won't see who reported it. Intellectual property reports are the exception.

Why does the same spammer keep coming back?

Spam operators make new accounts. Blocking covers the person's new accounts too, and each new account needs its own report with the spam reason.

Removal page · Reviewed October 21, 2026 · 9 min read

Report spam Instagram accounts, and how to report bot accounts on Instagram

Spam on Instagram arrives in five places: posts, comments, DMs, follow requests and your follower list. Each has its own report button or cleanup tool. This page maps them, shows how to tell a bot from a real person, and checks what Instagram filed with the EU between 1 and 20 October 2026.

To report spam on Instagram, tap the three dots on the post, comment, message or profile, choose Report, and pick the spam or scam reason. Bot accounts are reported from their profile the same way. Fake followers are removed, not reported, from the Flagged for review list.

Report spam Instagram shows you: which button for which place?

The fastest way to report spam on Instagram is the Report option on the item itself. Instagram's Help Centre says the best way to report abusive content or spam is "by using the Report link near the content itself", because the report then carries the exact post, comment or message to the reviewer. A general complaint about "a spammer" carries nothing.

Where Instagram spam appears, how to report it, and what to pick
Where the spam is	How to report it	Reason to pick	Extra step
A post or Reel	Three dots in the top right of the post, then Report	Scam, fraud or spam	Report the account too if every post is the same
A comment	Tap Comments, tap and hold the comment, then Report	Spam	Delete up to 25 comments at once from your own post
A DM or message request	Tap and hold the message, then Report; or tap the name, then Report for the whole chat	Spam or scam	Block, so new accounts from the same person are blocked too
A whole account	Open the profile, tap the options next to the username, then Report	Spam, or pretending to be someone if it copies you	Save the username before it changes
Your follower list	Not reported: open Followers, then Flagged for review	None needed	Remove all, or keep one with Not spam or irrelevant

That table is the whole answer to "instagram report spam" for most people. The rest of this page covers the harder cases: bots that look human, follower lists full of fakes, and why one spammer keeps coming back. For what the reported person sees afterwards, what Instagram tells the account you report sets it out.

How to report bot accounts on Instagram

Can you report bots on Instagram? Yes, and you do it the same way as a spam report Instagram account holders file on any profile: from the profile itself. If you want to know how to report bots on Instagram in bulk, there is no bulk button; you report bots Instagram shows you one account at a time. Instagram has no separate "bot" button, so the reason you pick is spam, or scam if the account asks for money, logins or codes.

Open the profile from its comment, follow request or message. Note the username, because bot accounts often rename themselves within days.
Tap the options next to the username, then Report, choose the type of account problem, and follow the on-screen steps to the spam reason.
If the bot sent you a message, report the message as well. Instagram says it reviews up to 30 of the most recent messages in a reported chat, so the account report and the message report support each other.
Block the account. Instagram's block covers the person's other existing accounts and any new ones they create.
If the bot uses your name, photos or brand, report it as pretending to be you instead. That is a stronger case than spam.

How do you tell a bot? Common signs are a profile with no posts or a few stock photos, a username ending in long number strings, many accounts posting the same comment within minutes, links in the bio to crypto, adult or "earn from home" pages, and a follow, like and message that all arrive in one burst. The About this account screen helps: it shows the date joined and how many times the username changed. One sign is not proof. Several together usually are.

Bots on Instagram are often the same tools sold as report bots elsewhere, which our look at Instagram report bots and the accounts they burn explains from the seller's side.

How to report fake Instagram followers

You do not need to report fake Instagram followers one by one. Instagram has a cleanup tool for exactly this. Its Help Centre says Instagram "may flag accounts if they're potentially spam, bots or irrelevant", and the feature "is automatically available for any account that is set to public".

Open your profile, tap Followers, and look for the Flagged for review notice above the list.
Tap Remove all to clear every flagged follower at once, or open each one and choose Not spam or irrelevant to keep it.
Follow requests from flagged accounts go to a separate Flagged folder, where you can review them before anyone gets in.
Removed followers are not told. Instagram says they "won't be notified that they've been removed from your followers".

Report a fake follower only when it does something: sends scam messages, comments spam, or copies your identity. A silent fake follower breaks no rule against you, and removing it is quicker than any report.

If the fakes arrived because someone bought followers for your account to make it look inauthentic, keep screenshots with dates. That pattern is covered in our audit of what Instagram does with a pile of reports on one account, because it often comes with a report attack.

Instagram report spammer DMs and comment floods

The worst spam usually arrives by DM. An Instagram report spammer case is strongest when you report the messages, not just the account, because the messages are the evidence.

Tap and hold the message, choose Report, then the spam or scam reason. To report the whole chat, tap the name at the top, then Report. Instagram can include deleted or unsent messages if the entire chat or a message around them is reported. Then block.

Many spam DMs try to move you off Instagram fast, usually to Telegram or WhatsApp, where Instagram's report tools no longer reach. Knowing how a Telegram message sender reaches people who never opted in explains why those first messages look so polished: they are sent in bulk to thousands of accounts. Report the Instagram message before you reply, and never send a login code to anyone.

For comment floods on your own posts, the fix is partly settings. Turn on Hidden Words to filter unwanted comments, use Limits to hold back comments from accounts that are new or do not follow you during a raid, and bulk delete up to 25 comments at a time. Then report the accounts behind the flood. The same comment-flood tactics on Facebook are covered in our page on Facebook mass report tools and Meta's rules.

Does spam reporting work on Instagram?

Yes, when the account breaks Meta's spam rules, and no, when you hope the number of reports will decide it. Instagram's Help Centre is direct: "The number of times that something is reported doesn't determine whether or not it's removed from Instagram."

What decides it is the spam policy itself. Meta's Community Standards on spam ban, among other things:

Posting, engaging, or creating accounts at very high frequencies, whether by hand or by automation.
Buying, selling or exchanging accounts.
Buying or selling likes, follows, views, shares or clicks.
Making people like or share before they can see promised content.
Misleading links, cloaking and deceptive redirects.
Landing pages that imitate a trusted brand.

A bot account that comments the same link on thousands of posts breaks the first and the fifth rule at once, and most such accounts are caught by automated systems before anyone reports them. Your report matters most for the ones that slip through: newer accounts, ones that behave like people, and scam accounts that target one person at a time.

What you see afterwards is limited. Support requests in your settings show reports Instagram chose to list, and the reported account is not told who reported it. If nothing happens, the reviewer found no violation in what was sent, and repeating the same report will get the same answer.

What did Instagram file with the EU in October 2026?

We counted Instagram's entries in the EU's DSA Transparency Database for 1 to 20 October 2026, on 21 October. Each time Instagram restricts content or an account in the EU, it files a statement of reasons with the kind of action, the category, and what started it.

Instagram filed 5,528,555 statements in those 20 days, and 4,203,331 of them ended an account.
5,525,105 (99.9 percent) came from Instagram's own detection and rules, not from a legal notice. Only 3,371 followed an Article 16 notice of illegal content.
Scams and fraud, the category where scam DMs and fake giveaway accounts land, accounted for 755,892 statements, and 552,927 of them ended an account.
5,376,991 statements (97.3 percent) say the problem was detected by automated means.

Read plainly: most spam and bot accounts on Instagram are found and closed by Instagram's own systems at very large scale. A user report adds the cases those systems missed. It works because it points at a rule break, not because it adds to a count.

Should you mass report a spammer back?

No. It is tempting to answer a bot ring with a report ring, but Meta's rules on inauthentic behaviour ban misusing reporting systems "to harass, intimidate or silence others", and the accounts used to do it can be closed. One accurate report per spam account, with the spam reason and the message or comment attached, is both allowed and more effective.

The same holds on other apps. X counts evidence, not volume, as our breakdown of what X counts when reports arrive shows, and people who pay for floods often lose the money, as what happens to people who buy mass reports on X records.

If the spam account uses your name to sell, it may be easier to remove through the impersonation or trademark route. Those options are set out in the four doors into an Instagram takedown and, for single posts or Reels, in which report takes an Instagram post or Reel down.

Spam reporting on other apps works the same way

Every large platform separates spam from other reports, and none acts on report count alone. YouTube handles spam comments and channels through its own queue, which the comparison of a spam report bot with one well-built spam report and what YouTube does with a flood of flags cover, and what a YouTube ban service can and cannot get removed adds the channel side. Instagram's sister app follows Meta's same spam rules, set out in how Facebook handles a wave of reports on one target. On TikTok, our test of TikTok report bots on videos, LIVE and comments, the teardown of TikTok mass report bots and panels and what really gets a TikTok account banned fast reach the same limit.

Messaging apps can only review what you send them. WhatsApp sees the forwarded messages, as the guide to WhatsApp report bots and what WhatsApp can see explains; Snapchat looks at evidence, in why Snapchat counts evidence, not reports; and on Telegram, what a Telegram report flood really triggers ends in the same place. One clear report on spam beats a hundred vague ones.

Sources

Questions on this matter

How do I report spam on Instagram?: Tap the three dots on the post, comment, message or profile, choose Report, and pick the spam or scam reason. Reporting the item itself gives the reviewer the evidence.
Can you report bots on Instagram?: Yes. Report the bot from its profile with the spam reason, report any message it sent, and block it. There is no separate bot button.
How do I remove fake followers on Instagram?: Open Followers and use Flagged for review. Remove all clears the flagged accounts at once, and they are not notified. It works on public accounts.
Does spam reporting work on Instagram?: It works when the account breaks Meta's spam rules. The number of reports does not decide removal; the violation does.
Will the spammer know I reported them?: No. Instagram says the account you report won't see who reported it. Intellectual property reports are the exception.
Why does the same spammer keep coming back?: Spam operators make new accounts. Blocking covers the person's new accounts too, and each new account needs its own report with the spam reason.