To retain its reputation as one of the less spammy social networks on the market, Instagram is cracking down on accounts that use third-party apps to artificially grow their audience.

“We will begin removing inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity,” the company notes in a new blog post.

The Facebook unit has fashioned new machine-learning tools to identify accounts that use such services; they then remove the inauthentic activity.

Additionally, accounts that use such services will receive an in-app message alerting them that Instagram has removed their inauthentic likes, follows and comments.

“People who use these types of apps share their username and password, and their accounts are sometimes used by third-party apps for inauthentic likes, follows and comments,” the network notes. “Not only does this introduce bad behavior into the Instagram community, it also makes these accounts less secure.”

Since its inception, Instagram has fought fraudulent activity by auto-detecting and removing fake accounts and other actions. Yet, such efforts taking on new urgency as Instagram contributes a larger share to Facebook’s bottom line.

As it stands, Instagram’s continued growth is failing to make up for the steady decline of Facebook’s flagship property.

Facebook-related properties -- including Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook’s flagship app – fell by 7%, year-over-year, according to a recent analysis of Nielsen data by Pivotal Research.

In aggregate, core Facebook properties -- including Messenger -- fell by 13%, while time spent per user fell by a whopping 20%, year-over-year.

The declines continued despite the increasing popularity of Instagram -- which saw usage increase by 41%. WhatsApp saw usage increase by 38%, year-over-year.