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Instagram Glitch Causes Follower Counts to Drop by Millions for Some Users, Fix on the Way

Instagram Glitch Causes Follower Counts to Drop by Millions for Some Users, Fix on the Way

By Harpreet Singh | Updated: 14 February 2019 14:10 IST

Some celebrities on Instagram have lost millions of followers due to a recent glitch

Highlights

An Instagram glitch led to some users losing a whole lot of followers
Instagram says it is working towards fixing the issue
Some users have apparently lost millions of followers

Some Instagram users have been reporting a drop in their follower count over the last 24 hours. While everyone was wondering if Instagram is coming down hard on fake followers, Instagram has acknowledged that it is indeed a bug. The company says it is working to resolve it as quickly as possible. Some users have even reported a massive drop in their follower count. The Facebook-owned app responded on Twitter claiming the issue affects some Instagram users.

In a statement, Instagram said, "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."

Some Instagram users have reported that they've lost as many as 4,000 followers, as a result of the new bug, while some celebrity users are claiming they've lost millions of followers. Popular celebrities such as Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande also been affected by the new Instagram bug.

why did I just lose over half a million followers @instagram wyd sis
— James Charles (@jamescharles) February 13, 2019

Instagram must be clearing out the inactive accounts because I just lost 20,000 followers a second ago.... tf
— Alice (@Pineapplebrat) February 13, 2019

Social apps such as Instagram and others do routine clean-ups, where inactive and fake accounts are wiped out, but in this case, Instagram has agreed that it is indeed a result of a glitch, which is likely to be fixed soon.

Back in November, Instagram had announced that it will be working towards removing fake likes, followers, and comments from its app. These largely included accounts that used third-party apps to spam other users. Instagram had said it will use its machine learning tools to identify such spammers on its network.

Recently, Twitter has been facing a similar glitch, where users' retweets and likes were affected. Some people had been reporting issues with notifications, likes, and retweets on its platform. Twitter is currently working on fixing the issue.

In case you've noticed a drop in your follower count on Instagram recently, there's no need to worry. All your followers should show up when Instagram fixes the bug.

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Harpreet Singh

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Harpreet is the community manager at Gadgets 360. He loves all things tech, and can be found hunting for good deals when he is not shopping online. He has written about deals and e-commerce in India for many years, as well as covering social media and breaking technology news. More