The company said customer demand for grocery delivery has surged more than 500% during the pandemic, notching growth its investors didn’t expect until 2025. While bots aren’t a new problem for Instacart, the recent deluge is different because it comes at a time of white-knuckled expansion for the San Francisco-based startup. These bots are literally taking the food off my kids’ table.” “No human can click that fast,” she said. When Marsh opens her Instacart shopping app, she sees promising orders disappear before she can act. The cost of the third-party apps ranges from $250 to $600 in cryptocurrency or bank deposits, according to the darkweb research firm, DarkOwl. In this way, the app tilts competition between shoppers but is invisible to customers and doesn’t take business away from Instacart either. But in order to gain an edge, some shoppers are paying software developers who have created bots-in the form of third-party apps-that run alongside the legitimate Instacart app and claim the best orders for clients. Normally, the shoppers open the Instacart shopping app and, as orders flash by, click on the ones they want to fulfill. ![]() Instacart pays contract workers to shop for groceries and deliver them to customers. In recent weeks, another problem has emerged: bots that snatch the largest, most lucrative orders out of the hands of other shoppers. Then the global pandemic hit, transforming once mundane trips to Los Angeles grocery stores where she lives into a palpable health risk.
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