Instagram messed up by causing follower count to drop by millions

Instagram is investigating a glitch that’s causing some of its most popular accounts to appear to lose millions of followers.

Instagram users woke up today to discover that many had lost followers overnight. In most cases, the number of followers an Instagram user lost was just a handful to several hundred, according to reports on Twitter. However, major Instagram personalities like Selena Gomez lost almost 2 million and Ariana Grande lost almost 3 million. Needless to say, people were NOT HAPPY and wanted an explanation as to why social media had creeped out.

Instagram wrote on Twitter this morning:

https://twitter.com/instagram/status/1095664792373743616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Apparently, Instagram was trying to remove all inauthentic accounts that were on the platform since November. A report suggested “Instagram took actions to remove millions of accounts the company believed to be inauthentic,” but it’s unclear if that’s the case following Instagram’s tweet about the issue. Many companies, including Instagram, do sporadic sweeps of their user bases to remove spam or inactive accounts.

All we can do is hope for the best that Instagram tries to solve the problem as soon as possible.