Instagram Users Report a Sudden Dip in Their Followers on the Platform

On May 6, Instagram users began reporting that, seemingly overnight, they lost tons of followers through no fault of their own. Many began to ask why their Instagram followers suddenly dropped and if it was something they did or not. Both influencers and average casual users of the app reported a loss in followers, so what gives?

There was no reported update from Instagram, at least that most users saw ahead of the apparent purge. But, after people began to complain about losing their followers on social media, others replied to share their own loss of followers they might have worked pretty hard for. It turns out, there might be a pretty understandable reason for the drop.

On May 5, the day before users began to share the drop in followers on their accounts, Meta, the company behind Instagram and Facebook, wrote a blog post about cracking down on certain Instagram users. Meta explained in the post that the company was using AI tools to weed out Instagram users who might be underage, based on content they posted and other clues to determine that their accounts were essentially fraudulent.

The timing of the blog post and the Instagram purge does line up.

"Our AI looks at general themes and visual cues, for example, height or bone structure, to estimate someone's general age," Meta wrote in the post. "It does not identify the specific person in the image."

The technology also worked to weed out bot accounts that might seem suspicious.

According to a Reddit post about the drop in followers, even official accounts like Instagram's own official profile were affected by the drop. It reportedly lost more than 10 million followers because of the AI-powered sweep. Most accounts, according to the post, lost around 2 percent of their followers, from smaller accounts to ones with a much larger number of followers.

In another Reddit post, users reported seeing the numbers drop, even if they had hardly any followers to begin with.

"Just happened to my personal account, I lost like 35 followers outta no where lol," one user commented on the post.

Another added, "My inactive account from 2014 got suspended yesterday, I'm sure for inactivity, I never use it, haven't logged in in 10+ years. I believe that they're cracking down on bots and inactive accounts. It would explain the drops."

Celebrities, particularly those in the Kardashian-Jenner family, have long been accused of purchasing "bot" accounts to increase their follower numbers. FastHosts analyzed data on Instagram to determine which celebrities do indeed have a ton of bot accounts as followers, and, unsurprisingly, Kylie Jenner was ranked as number one, with a reported 40 percent of suspected bot followers.

Kendall Jenner was in second place, with 37 percent of her followers being suspected of being fake. Will the Meta purge help change that for good? That remains to be seen, but there is no denying that users across the board experienced a loss in followers, whether they like it or not. From here, all they can do is hope to raise their numbers again.