“We’re aware of an issue causing a change in account follower numbers for some people right now. We’re working quickly to fix this”.Instagram later issued a follow-up:
“Update: we’re expecting to have this issue resolved by 9 a.m. PST tomorrow. We understand this is frustrating, and our team is hard at work to get things back to normal.”
Who Was Affected
Several popular celebrities lost millions of followers due to the bug. Selena Gomez lost more than 2 million followers, as did Kylie Jenner. Nike also lost 1.1 million followers. Other victims include influencers like YouTube creators James Charles and Zach Clayton. It appears that the number of followers an account lost is proportional to the number of followers they originally had.Reason
As big names on Instagram lost followers overnight, several users speculated that Instagram was removing fake accounts as they had in the past. Fake accounts do not contribute much to the general landscape of the social media app but made up a bulk of the fan-made accounts that follow celebrities. The number of followers is important to Instagram influencers since that dictates their ability to negotiate advertising contracts. Instagram has always had a problem with influencers buying followers. Because brands only pay people with high follower counts to advertise their goods, there is a constant incentive to increase followers. A few days ago, Instagram sent out a notification to its users saying it recognized deceptive activity on their platform. It read:“We will begin removing inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity. We’ve built machine learning tools to help identify accounts that use these services and remove the inauthentic activity.”Users had even been sharing their login information with apps that promised to increase their followers. Instagram made it clear that they would work to put an end to this. Other social media platforms also occasionally remove fake accounts in bulk.
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