Instagram, in one of the largest cleanups in its history, removed millions of fake, bot, and inactive accounts—an action that caused a sudden drop in the follower counts of many celebrities and content creators.
According to The Telegraph, this extensive cleanup by Meta was carried out in just a few hours, with millions of followers removed from well-known accounts, sparking widespread reactions among social media users.
Reports indicate that Cristiano Ronaldo lost around 8 million followers, Lionel Messi nearly 5 million, Kylie Jenner over 14 million, Selena Gomez about 6 million, and Ariana Grande over 5 million followers.
The follower counts of Kim Kardashian, Neymar, the group BLACKPINK, and BTS also saw significant decreases.
In the first hours, many users thought this sudden drop was due to a technical glitch or a large-scale campaign to unfollow celebrity accounts, but it later became clear that Meta was removing fake and inactive accounts.
Meta stated in a press release that this action is part of its regular process of deleting inactive accounts and that some Instagram accounts might notice changes in their follower numbers.
Meta also emphasized that active and real followers of users were not affected by this cleanup.
Writer:Salima Aryaei
