After years of accusations that Nike turns a blind eye to bots on its SNKRS platform, the company has spoken out about how it combats these internet pests.
The sneaker giant shared a post on its website and on the SNKRS app titled “Inside SNKRS.” In the blog, Nike maintained that shoe releases are protected against bots, which can be used to check out shoe purchases “quickly and in greater numbers than any human ever could.” The post pointed out that Nike’s terms and conditions banned the use of bots and detects them through several measures, including account verifications and IP reputation. These provisions have been in place for nearly seven years now.
The SNKRS app has been widely criticized for how quickly hot ticket items sell out, oftentimes within minutes. Many users have pointed out that they don’t have a fair shot at securing new releases. This is a common tool used by sneaker resellers, who allegedly employ bots to buy as many sneakers as possible to sell them online for an increased price. Nike maintains that this is not the case but instead blames the near-immediate selling out of the sneakers on popularity.
“SNKRS features Nike’s most coveted drops, and demand often greatly outweighs supply,” the post stated.
While Nike acknowledges that some bots make it through the entire process, they say that once the bots are identified, the purchases are voided and removed from the release. Even with the best efforts of dedicated engineers, Nike admitted that it removes up to 12 billion bot submissions from SNKRS launches every month.
Maybe the SNKRS launches aren’t rigged, but they certainly could use a better system.
