New research has found that 20% of Instagram posts about luxury fashion brands featured counterfeit and/or illicit products. The report calls for a comprehensive international strategy to fight the prevalence of fake goods online, but the usual roadblocks remain, meaning that the status quo will not change any time soon.
The study, Social Media and Luxury Goods Counterfeit: a growing concern for government, industry and consumers worldwide (available here via The Washington Post?s website and led by researcher Andrea Stroppa) examined 750,000 Instagram posts focused on top fashion brands and found that one-fifth featured counterfeit and/or illicit products. Amongst the posts scrutinised, when examining the use of hashtags, Chanel was the top targeted brand by infringers, followed by Prada, and Louis Vuitton. The top ten brand hashtags used by infringers were:

Chanel (13.90%)
Prada (9.69%)
Louis Vuitton (8.51%)
Fendi (6.41%)
Gucci (6.13%)
Dior (5.96%)
Celine (5.59%)
Hermes (5.51%)
Rayban / Oakley (4.90%)
Bvlgari (4.49%)

Beyond the headline figure of 150,000 posts featuring counterfeit or illicit products, the research drilled down to look at how these posts are generated, with bots, algorithms and AI software being deployed to promote counterfeits to users. In the online space, such activity creates a clear challenge for the counsel charged with spearheading takedown efforts as the use of such technology allows infringers to  publish simultaneously from multiple accounts...