Dubbed the ‘Instagram rapture’, millions of Instagram accounts – believed to be posting spam – were deleted last Friday by Instagram, angering many legitimate users.
While this mass culling may be a welcome for many Instagrammers who prefer to interact with real users, some account holders have lost more than just a couple of spammer-followers. Rapper Akon reportedly lost more than 50% of this followers, while Justin Bieber lost over 3.5 million fans overnight. In a twist of irony, Instagram lost over 18 million accounts on its site overnight.
Instagram, like its parent company Facebook, routinely removes spammers to prevent users from ‘buying’ followers to appear more popular, and has been warning its users about the upcoming deletion of fake accounts in the week prior to Friday. The mass deletion exposed just how many people potentially pay for followers, and many of the deleted accounts were determined by Instagram to be ‘bots’ designed to inflate follower counts to influence public opinion about culture and/or products.
According to chief executive and founder Kevin Systrom, Instagram will be deleting these accounts forever so they won’t be included in follower counts.
Legitimate users have nothing to worry about, except for losing out on a few (maybe more) fans. So, if you’re a legitimate user with thousands of fans, don’t be surprised to see a dip in your followers. At least the ones you do have are real users.
