Instagram has deleted millions of fake and inactive followers; a sudden drop in follower counts on many pages.

In its latest extensive cleanup, Instagram has removed millions of fake, bot, and inactive accounts; an action that has led to a sudden decrease in the number of followers for many users worldwide.

This change is part of Meta's efforts to enhance account authenticity and combat spam, fake followers, and inactive accounts.

Although Instagram regularly conducts such cleanups, many users say this new wave has been much more noticeable due to its scale, with some pages experiencing a significant drop in followers within just a few hours or overnight.

This issue has affected both small pages and large accounts, influencers, and public figures; especially those for whom engagement and follower count are of commercial importance.

According to reports, the decrease in followers is more related to the removal of low-quality and inactive accounts rather than actual unfollowing by users.

Instagram has stated that this action is part of its ongoing policy to maintain the health of the platform so that engagement and view statistics are displayed more accurately and the content display system operates more precisely.

Some users have also expressed concern about the removal of inactive accounts. One user wrote on platform X:

“Removing bots is good, but deleting inactive accounts can be dangerous. Some of these accounts belong to people who are no longer with us and serve as a memorial for their family and friends.”

Instagram currently has a feature called memorialisation that converts a user's account to a memorial state upon confirmation of their death to preserve content and memories; however, many inactive accounts have not yet been transitioned to this state.

Overall, this cleanup has affected nearly all categories of Instagram accounts, but the extent of the decrease in followers has varied depending on the number of inactive accounts for each page.

Source: Gulf News