Many power Instagram users noticed their follower count dropped on Wednesday, but the follower desertion had nothing to do with their last selfie or breakfast photo.
It turns out, an apparent glitch may be to blame. Instagram acknowledged the issue in a tweet on Wednesday morning and said its team is “working to resolve this as quickly as possible.”
We’re aware of an issue that is causing a change in account follower numbers for some people right now. We’re working to resolve this as quickly as possible.
— Instagram (@instagram) February 13, 2019
An Instagram spokesperson did not provide any additional information about what caused the glitch, but said Wednesday afternoon that the company is still working to fix the issue.
There had been some speculation that Instagram was conducting a large scale purge of inauthentic followers to crack down on fraudulent activity on the platform. However the tweet this morning suggests the lost followers problem was a separate issue and not a way to cleanse the Instagram platform of fake accounts.
Https://twitter.com/theoneprinceton/status/1095501576267956226
Many celebrity users (as well as Insta-celebrity users) saw their follower counts drop by the hundreds of thousands and in some cases, millions. James Charles, a make-up artist with more than 14 million followers on Instagram, tweeted that his follower count dropped by more than half a million overnight.
Why did I just lose over half a million followers @instagram wyd sis
— James Charles (@jamescharles) February 13, 2019
The glitch also caused other avid celebrity Instagramers, including Ariana Grande and Katy Perry, to lose millions of followers.
So far, there has been no official comment on the drop from the World Record Egg.