Instagram Fake Followers Purge Causes Celebrity Panic

If you are on Instagram, you may have gotten a message lately saying they were going to conduct a fix on your page to remove spam followers. Well, they were not joking and they purged millions of accounts to the fury of some big stars who have lost millions of followers as a result of the cull. 

The purge saw Instagram erase nearly 19 million of its own followers in what the site described as a “general clean up”.

According to some third party media analysts those to have seen their profile diminish include Justin Bieber, who saw 3,538,228 followers disappear at a stroke.

Many celebs have their social media accounts handled by a team of experts who usually buy followers for as low as $30 for 2,500 followers. 

On Thursday accounts like Kim K lost 1.3 million followers, Rihanna lost about 1.2 million, Katy Perry lost 300,000 and Oprah said goodbye to 100,000 followers.

Rapper Ma$e, even seemed to have deleted his account after losing most of his followers. His 1.5 million followers plunged to 272,000 after the purge — prompting mocking comments from his remaining fans before he deleted the account entirely

According to Michael Heller, CEO of Talent Resources via PageSix; 

“It’s bad for a celeb for many reasons“. “It’s embarrassing,” “they also could lose lots of money“.

It is no secret that here in Mzansi some celebrities have careers simply because of their Twitter followers numbers. We, as an industry, have put so much reverence and importance on Twitter as medium to gauge a person's star power. 

Ridiculous as it is common knowledge that a lot of people on Twitter buy followers or are just followed by dormant accounts. 

For South Africa's most followed celebrities, only 30% of people who follow them are active on the social media site.  If you missed that read HERE. 

In a blog post Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s chief executive, explained the reason for the cull;

“As more people join, keeping Instagram authentic is critical — it’s a place where real people share real moments. 

“We’re committed to doing everything possible to keep Instagram free from the fake and spammy accounts that plague much of the web, and that’s why we’re finishing up some important work that began earlier this year.”

How interesting would it be if Twitter did a purge next? I bet a lot of people would be surprised to learn that some people are not as popular as you think.