Instagram bug causes Katy Perry and Kylie Jenner to lose millions of followers temporarily

Instagram users have noticed that they have fewer followers today than they did yesterday. It seems that Instagram has conducted a cull of some accounts leaving some users annoyed at their new lower follower counts. Some big names and large companies are affected.

Social media consultant Matt Navarra has compiled some numbers on Instagram’s biggest accounts which have, by virtue of their follower count, lost the largest numbers. Katy Perry, for example, lost 900,000. Professional influencer Kylie Jenner has been hit hard too, dumping 2.5 million followers in total. Sports fashion brand Nike lost a large number of followers too, dropping from 84,600,000 to 83,500,000 – that is 1,100,000 accounts in total.

Hand Nigeria over to young generation in 2023, Sanusi tells Buhari, others

Twitter has been ablaze with complaints about the losses. But the reason is simple: Instagram is cracking down on suspicious or fake accounts. These were not followers that added anything to the social media landscape, but they did give some people a boost in followers.

With its influencers getting paid tens to hundreds of thousands for Instagram ads this might be a concern. The social media platform has, as such, got a problem with people buying followers to boost their popularity. Recently Instagram sent notifications to people who it thought had shared their details with apps that offer to increase follower and like counts. The company said last year that it was actively seeking to reduce inauthentic activity on the platform.

It is not clear how many accounts were purged by Facebook-owned Instagram, but it is clearly millions. It is also not clear if this activity is entirely related to the ongoing drive to improve the quality of Instagram or if there might be gremlins in the machinery somewhere.

Credit: Forbes