Influencers in Dubai tend to be a favourite topic for many. 

Particularly with the announcement of the new laws requiring influencers in the UAE to have a business licence now. 

Instagram is a core tool for many influencers, with the establishing of themselves as brands on the photo-sharing platform. 

And most of the influencers you follow are probably in comment pods. 

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What are comment pods? 

Instagram comment pods are basically groups, or whatsapp groups of people that all want to up their engagement on Instagram. 

The influencers have agreements to comment on each others’ latest posts, upping engagement. 

It’s simple enough. 

But it makes everyone look like they’re getting more engagement than they are.

Not to be confused with comment bots

Comment bots are those automated commenting systems – that are designed to comment whenever someone uses a certain hashtag. 

The comments are usually very vague and spam-style “Love your content” or “this is so cool” comments are generally comment bots. 

Pods are people actually commenting and engaging in posts – because they’ve created an agreement to support each other’s accounts via commenting and liking. 

Why though? 

Aside from the obvious – the fact that this increases the stats for engagement, it also is done in a bid to beat the Instagram algorithm – which is no longer presenting content in chronological order. 

The commenting and liking of posts is aimed at boosting their favour in the eyes of the algorithm, which attempts to only show you posts it thinks you will like – and if a post has dozens, hundreds or thousands of comments – it’s thought that post will be up-voted within the algorithm. 

That could keep advertisers happy, make their accounts look more robust, or just be a comfort to egos. 

They’re everywhere 

Instagram pods are common abroad, and in the UAE – and if you see repeated, simplistic engagement between accounts, with a line of seemingly random emojis – it may be the result of a pod. 

Many Dubai influencers ARE in pods, and while we won’t name shame them (we can’t objectively name all of them, so it wouldn’t be fair to name a handful), you’ll probably know them when you see them now.