Legal Media Center targeted by mass bot attack on Instagram

The Legal Media Center temporarily disabled comments on several Instagram posts following a large-scale bot attack.

According to the organization, the attack targeted five posts related to the recent elections. Within a short period of time, more than a thousand nearly identical comments appeared under the posts.

The comments contained claims about alleged financial problems involving journalist Vadim Boreiko, suspicious links, and, in some cases, calls for users to transfer money to a bank account.

The Legal Media Center said this was the second time it had faced an attack of this kind.

“This is already the second wave of a mass attack. The first occurred about a week ago, but the current one is significantly larger in scale,” the organization said.

Representatives of the organization are concerned that the sudden surge in suspicious activity, the large number of identical messages, and comments posted by bots could be interpreted by Instagram’s algorithms as artificially generated engagement. This could result in restrictions being imposed on the Legal Media Center’s account itself, which is why comments on the affected posts were temporarily disabled.

Previously, the personal Facebook accounts of Legal Media Center Director Diana Okremova and Media Qoldau head Gulmira Birzhanova were also blocked.

The organization’s own social media accounts had also previously been targeted by attacks and restrictions. In February 2026, the Legal Media Center’s YouTube channel was removed following a series of attacks.

In recent weeks, journalists, activists, and other members of the media community have also reported account blocks, coordinated mass complaints, and other suspicious activity on social media platforms.