'I don't get paid' - Running Instagram for Love Islanders

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-49071612

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Nasty messages, hack attempts and thousands of requests to sort through.

Those running the social media accounts for Love Island contestants say it's a full-time job - but with no pay.

"I'm not offered any payment... I'm hoping Amber will take us away once it's all done because I could really do with a holiday!"

Mart Tweedy looks after the Instagram and Twitter accounts of close friend Amber Rose Gill, who's been on the show since the start of the season.

While some cast members' social media posts are carefully looked after by management companies, others are run by family members or friends.

Mart told Radio 1 Newsbeat how Amber asked him to get involved.

"She was like 'I just want funny memes on my page... you're into reality TV, you're really organised...do you think you'd be up for it?

"And I thought 'yeah, actually I'd love to do that' - but it's not just been social media, it's been bank managers, solicitors, accountants.. it's a massive whirlwind."

Hannah Stakim ran Amy Hart's Instagram account before she voluntarily left the villa earlier this month after having her heart broken by Curtis Pritchard.

She says while it was a lot of work, she did it to be a good friend - and is enjoying the perks now.

"I know she'd do the same for me if I was in there - obviously I get invited to all her fancy dos!"

And even though Amy's no longer on the ITV show, her schedule is so hectic that she's asked Hannah to help her until things calm down a bit.

"She's asked me to stay on for a while because she's so busy. I'm still involved, I go through her messages... I'm happy to be as involved as she wants me to be."

"I've aged 80 years in the past eight weeks."

Mart does one main social media post a day, but a lot of his time is taken up replying to messages from Amber's followers.

"She's getting about three thousand messages a day and over a thousand e-mails - I'm barely watching the show because I'm trying to engage - then it's all of the Instagram stories and things like that.

"I read through every single message - if someone's asking where she got her clothes from or what products she's using on her hair, I'm always messaging back."

Hannah, who works at an NHS surgery in Sussex, told Newsbeat she tried to clear Amy's inbox every day, but it was "just impossible - you'd be on it every day if you had to reply to them all.

"When I'm living my actual life and trying to do my job at the same time, it proved quite difficult."

Dealing with hackers

Two-factor authentification was turned on for both Amy and Amber's Instagram accounts.

It's a security measure which means the user gets a code sent to their mobile to give them access to log on.

In Amber's case, it proved necessary, with "ten or eleven hack attempts" in the first week alone.

"There were even some messages flying around that clearly hadn't come from Amber but people had Photoshopped so it looked like they had."

Hannah had a similar experience with Amy's account, even getting emails saying her Snapchat had been hacked into.

"She hasn't been on Snapchat for years... It was ok - we got on and deleted it!"

"She wasn't expecting this many followers"

On Instagram, Amy now has over a million followers - but it's not just the Islanders themselves who've seen their follower numbers rise.

Before her best friend entered the Love Island villa, Hannah had "about 700 followers - and I'm just above 4500 now so it's gone up quite a lot for little old me!

"It's weird but it's lovely... it's just really nice supportive vibes!"

Mart thinks Amber will be shocked when she sees how she's done.

"I think when Adam Collard and Elle Brown left last year, they had about 1.1 or 1.2 million followers and it's just crazy to think that Amber's up to nearly up to 1.5million already.

"She said she'd be more than happy with half a million!

"It's been eight weeks of absolute madness and we're into the final stretch now."

But while he's ready for a holiday, Mart's not expecting any sort of reward from Amber for the work he's put in.

"I just hope that she'll see what I've done and see what a good friend I am to her - I've got her best interests at heart at the end of the day."

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