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Stop pretending to be in Singapore on Instagram

The Singapore loophole enabled US-based Instagram stars to become even more inexplicably popular.

If you were looking to juice your Instagram metrics, then changing your (digital) location as Singapore was a nifty shortcut. According to the Telegraph, the photo-sharing network's algorithm was more likely to put you on the Explore page if you were in the country. Unfortunately, the Facebook-owned company has now spotted the problem and squashed it, so you'll have to stop trying to pretend your bathroom selfies were taken on the island.

A few days back, Mic. spoke to various high-profile names on the service who found that they saw spikes in likes and comments when they lied about their location. According to one anonymous source, they would tag their images as Singapore, Singapore, or Sentosa, Singapore. That data would be left up for the first 12 hours before the creators would amend it back to its authentic locale.

Nobody's sure as to what caused the bug in the first place, although there's a theory that the company's slow-rollout of its algorithm-based feeds caused it. We'll probably never know for sure, but you can stop lying about where you are for popularity. Instead, you'll have to go back to exaggerating every other facet of your lives on social media in the hope that people slam their hand on that heart button.