Instagram really cleaned house on Thursday, which accounts for some dramatic drops in some users’ follower counts. The photo-sharing service wiped out all the fake accounts, which violates their Community Guidelines.
The purge saw a drastic decline in followers for some celebrities, as well as non-celebrities who aren’t happy with the dwindling numbers.
This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment act, however, as they warned they would be cleaning out spam accounts last week as part of their announcement that they hit 300 million users, surpassing Twitter’s 284 million.
Business Insider reports angry Instagram users even banded together after the purge to petition for everyone to unfollow the official Instagram account. They’ve since lost 30 percent of their followers.
On Wednesday, the company wrote in a blog post, “When we remove accounts from Instagram that don't follow our Community Guidelines, you may see a decrease in your follower coun. This shouldn’t affect engagement from authentic accounts that like and comment on your posts."
Celebrities were clearly hit the hardest, based on their large amount of followers. Web developer Zach Allia made an infographic to demonstrate just how many fake accounts there were and how the top 100 followed were effected. Justin Bieber lost over 3.5 million followers and Kim Kardashian lost over 1 million.
image via Famous/ACE/INFphoto.com