In a bid to clean up their site of fake accounts and spambots, Instagram initiated a purge that led to millions of accounts being deleted and ended up with several users, including celebrities, losing millions of followers, The Telegraph reported.
Celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey, and footballers Wayne Rooney, John Terry and Christiano Ronaldo were just a few affected.
Bieber ended up losing around 3.5 million followers in one fell swoop, while Kardashian lost 1.3 million and Winfrey lost 100,00. Rooney said goodbye to 1.5 million followers, Terry with 567,000 and Ronaldo lost 9.9 followers, three times the amount of Bieber's loss.
Instagram's own account also ended up with nearly 19 million followers less than before, and President Barack Obama lost 213,000 followers as well.
Several rappers were hit hard, such as Tyga, Akon who found himself with 56 percent less followers and Ma$e with 1.5 million less, according to The Guardian. Other musicians affected include Beyoncé with 832,000 followers less, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, according to CNET.
Zach Allia, a software developer, created a list of the top 100 accounts that ended up losing the most followers and pointed out user chiragchirag78 as the biggest loser. The user had his account deleted, but not before his follower count dropped from 3.6 million to only eight, according to Daily Mail.
Instagram warned users of the upcoming deletions earlier this month, according to BBC News, and founder and chief executive Kevin Systrom stated that they have been regularly deactivating "spammy" accounts to improve user experience.
"As part of this effort, we will be deleting these accounts forever, so they will no longer be included in follower counts," he added.
Instagram recently announced that it has more than 300 million users and despite the purge, the figure was reportedly not affected as fake and inactive accounts were not included in the count, according to Daily Mail.
Given the millions of account deletions, Instagram is being asked for a commentary. They have yet to respond.
