If you have suddenly discovered a huge drop of in Instagram followers, it is nothing you did. Instagram finally got around to purging all the spambot accounts that it has previously disabled.
It is unclear why Instagram hasn’t been purging these accounts all along or removing them from follower accounts as they disabled each account. Some Instagram accounts lost millions of followers with the Thursday morning purge. Instagram’s own account lost almost 19 million followers, or almost 30% of their total followers. And celebrities saw their numbers tumble quite a bit as well, such as the 1.3 million lost by Kim Kardashian.
According to Engadget, there are plenty of users who are more than a little bit upset with the huge drop in followers, and are being quite vocal about it. Instagram does plan to continue purging spam accounts, but on a regular cycle so it won’t be quite as noticeable to users.
This purge comes hot on the heals of Instagram releasing data that they have 300 million monthly users active on the platform every month. However Instagram confirms that the numbers they released did not include the spam accounts that were purged.
Jennifer Slegg
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