Instagram Just Murdered All of Its Robots That's why your follower count just went down.
By Laura Entis
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Instagram just made good on its promise to clean up its site by purging all the inactive and bot accounts. And there were so many! In cleaning up its platform, Instagram lost millions of accounts just days after announcing it had reached a milestone of 300 million active users.
While Instagram doesn't seem too concerned – the company received a sky-high valuation this week of $35 billion from Citibank, much more than the $1 billion Mark Zuckerberg paid for it back in April 2013 – the same can't be said for some of its users, many of whom woke up to a reverse-Christmas scenario of sorts.
Predictably, celebrities and public figures were hit pretty hard, although some fared worse than others. Handily, web developer Zach Allia has organized a graph illustrating how many followers, as well as the percentage of followers, Instagram's top 100 accounts lost in what some are calling the "Instagram Rapture."
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As you can see, most accounts on the list lost about 3 to 8 percent of their followers. A few saw a considerably larger slice evaporate – Justin Bieber is down 3.5 million of them, or nearly 15 percent of his former total, while Bruno Mars went from 3.6 million to 2.8 million, a 23 percent decline. And then there were the accounts that got absolutely ravaged – Akon saw his follower count slide from 4.3 to 1.9 million followers (a loss of 56 percent), while rapper Ma$e, who went from 1.6 million followers to around 100,000 overnight, has shut down his account.
The size of the purge highlights the ease with which people can purchase followers on social media. A million Instagram followers, for example, can be bought for a mere $3,700 which probably helps explain why Ma$e retreated from Instagram altogether; his plummeting follower count suggests that he purchased bots to pump up his Insta-image.
Interestingly, the brands that managed to crack the top 100 saw a notably less dramatic decrease in followers -- Nike (a 2.8 percent drop), H&M (2.7 percent), GoPro (2.5 percent drop) and Louis Vuitton (2.9 percent) – indicating that the engagement they create on the platform is real.
In the massacre's aftermath, public personalities and normals alike have reacted to the loss. There was much outrage. Some denial. Quite a bit of humble bragging, as well as pockets of acceptance.
Related: Fake Twitter Followers: How Many Do You Have?
Below are a few popular reactions.
Outrage
I don't understand why I lost so many Instagram followers. I never once bought followers or any of that bs. I'm mad at you @instagram
— Meghan McCarthy (@MeghanWMcCarthy) December 18, 2014bruh. J Wow from Jersey Shore went from 2.6 million followers to 116k! now that's WOW lmao even Kim K lost a million followers today damn
— BEN BALLER™ (@BENBALLER) December 18, 2014Mase lost 1.5million followers and deleted his Instagram uno loooooooool omfg uno how funny that is he threw in the towel
— A SQUEEZY (@ArnoldJorge) December 18, 2014Pretty glad I only lost 2k in followers during the insta "rapture". Really glad you guys are real people ?
— Lindsey Bell (@lindseybell) December 19, 2014Stop complaining about the 50 followers you lost on insta... I literally lost 4,000 lol
— Meaghan Mackey (@MackeyMeaghan) December 19, 2014Instagram weeded out fake accounts. Happy to announce we lost no followers! Also relieved to know you guys weren't all robots.
— Stick To Your Guns (@STYGoc) December 18, 2014I lost 20k followers in the #InstagramPurge and I'm feeling cleaner than ever! Only real people, please! Twitter, next?
— Andy Cohen (@Andy) December 18, 2014
