Is social media automation allowed? What X, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn say

Two different things are called automation

One is publishing: a post you chose, sent to the network at a time, by a scheduler, a script or an AI agent through the network’s official API. The other is acting on other people’s content: liking, following, replying, messaging or commenting at scale, or driving the website itself with a script. The networks treat them very differently, and most of what is banned is the second.

X defines the word: automation is accounts or apps that take repeated actions without a person actively performing them.

What each network’s own page says

Read on 10 October 2026.

X

• Posting. Automated posts are allowed, including posts built from outside sources such as an RSS feed if you are authorized to publish that information, as long as every other rule is kept.
• Consent. A user authorizing your app with OAuth is not, by itself, enough to take automated actions through their account. You must describe the actions, get the user’s express consent and honor an opt-out at once.
• Likes and follows. Automated likes and hiding replies are not allowed, and neither is bulk, aggressive or indiscriminate following.
• Replies and messages. Automated replies are allowed only to people who opted in, once per interaction; replies based on keyword searches alone are not. An AI reply bot needs X’s prior written and explicit approval.
• Scripts. X lists non-API automation, such as scripting its website, among the things not to do, and says it may lead to permanent suspension.
• Enforcement. X may filter your posts from search results or suspend the account, and may rate limit or end a developer’s API access. It also tells users that they are ultimately responsible for what apps associated with their account do.

Instagram

• The Terms. Instagram’s Terms of Use say you can’t attempt to create accounts or access or collect information in unauthorized ways, which they say includes doing so in an automated way without Instagram’s express permission. They also say use of its API is subject to the Meta Platform Terms and Developer Policies.
• Publishing. Its API publishes for professional accounts and allows 100 API-published posts within a 24-hour moving period. The page describes publishing at once and gives no field for a publish time, so a scheduling tool keeps the post and sends it at the time.
• Likes, follows, replies. The Terms page names no specific automated action such as liking or following. The Community Standards and the Platform Terms it points to are not covered here.

TikTok

• Consent. TikTok’s content sharing guidelines, updated 4 August 2026, say an app must only start sending content to TikTok after the user has expressly consented to the upload. It should show a preview and let the user edit preset text.
• Settings. The app must let the user choose the privacy status, with no default value, and turn on the interaction settings themselves, with none ticked by default.
• Intended use. Apps should help authentic creators post original content, and an app that copies arbitrary content from other platforms is not acceptable. Apps must be meant for a wide audience, not for internal or private use: TikTok lists a utility tool that uploads only to the accounts you or your team manage as not acceptable.
• Limits. An app that has not been audited can post only privately, for at most five users in 24 hours. Every app is subject to about 15 posts a day per creator, shared across all apps.

LinkedIn

• Prohibited software. LinkedIn’s help page prohibits bots and other unauthorized automated methods that access the service, add or download contacts, send or redirect messages, or create, comment on, like, share or re-share posts. Accounts may be restricted or shut down, and the tools may stop working without notice.
• The API Terms. Last revised 13 December 2022, they list among prohibited uses: “Use the Content or the APIs to automate posting on the LinkedIn Services.” They also say that if the developer documentation and the Terms conflict, the Terms control.
• The API documentation. It describes the opposite use. Share on LinkedIn’s w_member_social permission is “required to create a LinkedIn post on behalf of the authenticated member”, with a limit of 150 requests per member a day.

We found no LinkedIn page that says how the API Terms line and the posting documentation fit together, and we have not asked LinkedIn. LinkedIn also schedules posts itself: see how to schedule LinkedIn posts.

What the four have in common

• A person’s consent, specific to the action. X asks for express consent to the types of action; TikTok to the upload; Instagram for automated access.
• The official API, not the website. X is explicit that scripting the site is out. Instagram and LinkedIn bar automated access they have not permitted.
• Volume ceilings. Instagram’s 100 API-published posts in 24 hours, TikTok’s 15 or so a day per creator and LinkedIn’s 150 requests per member a day.
• The strictest rules sit on engagement. Likes, follows, replies and messages.

Mellow Hub and these rules

Hub publishes through each network’s official API, by way of its publishing provider, and has no tool that likes, follows, replies to or messages anyone: its tools prepare, check, schedule, move and cancel your posts and read their results. Who sends a post is a choice made on its consent screen, review mode or autopilot, with a daily limit and an expiry.

Hub is paid: plans start at $19 a month (Solo), after a 7-day trial with a card on file that costs nothing if you cancel before it ends, and a monthly plan's first month is 20% off. Publishing is unlimited on every plan, under a fair-use ceiling that stops automated floods (900 publications a month on Solo). One publication is one post on one account, so a post sent to five networks counts as five. There are no automatic overage charges.

What we have not verified:

• how LinkedIn applies the API Terms line to a post a member has asked a tool to send, and how TikTok reads a standing delegation to an agent against “express consent to the upload”. Hub’s autopilot is one consent given in advance, and TikTok’s page does not say whether it counts;
• the rules of Facebook, YouTube, Threads, Pinterest and Bluesky, which this page does not cover;
• Instagram’s Community Standards and Meta’s Platform Terms.