October 2022 Newsletter - Small Business vs The Bots

Hi all,

Firstly the good news, we have a new beer launching today - Galaxy Haze -  and pouring exclusively at the Taproom and Lost In Leith all weekend. It's a fantastic Hazy Pale Ale using Australian superhop Galaxy, released just in time for the visit of their Rugby team to Edinburgh in a few weeks.

Thanks to the many of you who alerted us to the news that our Campervan Taproom Instagram account had been hacked, and I can only apologise to those who have been phished by the account sending messages. We were one of many local businesses to either have accounts hacked or replicated last weekend. The hacker (or bot) has managed to change all the passwords, email information and account name, so in effect the account has now been stolen from us, and we're unable to either delete the account nor claim it back.

You would think that Instagram/Meta might be willing to help their own customers, but they're perfectly happy to suck the cash but leave the business to wilt. IG customer services does not have a human element - phone or instant chat - so you're left with the farcical situation of trying to find a solution to a bot attack by interacting with a bot. For our situation there is no apparent solution available.

To all intents and purposes the account is gone, but the damage is two-fold for us. While the stolen account remains active, it harasses our customers under our name. For us as a small business which has built its reputation organically with very little marketing, the loss of an account with 1,500 active followers promoting our wee bar is massive.

It's a frustrating and very modern problem, and the complete unwillingness of Instagram to help in any way shows what we all know - big tech does not care for small business.

Cheers,
Paul