Following a ruckus on Twitter, Instagram acknowledged that a bug is causing a massive drop in the number of followers in many Instagram accounts, particularly the accounts of prominent figures.
Earlier, it was speculated that this is an outcome of the company culling inactive and fake accounts. Now, it looks more like a glitch that Instagram is now working on.
Update: we’re expecting to have this issue resolved by 9 a.m. PST tomorrow. We understand this is frustrating, and our team is hard at work to get things back to normal.
— Instagram (@instagram) February 13, 2019
According to the tweet from Instagram, the issue will get resolved by 9 a.m PST by today, or 10:30 pm in IST. Instagram also asked users to be patient while the team works on fixing the bug.
Based on Twitter reports, many influencers on Instagram have lost from hundreds to millions of followers owing to the bug. For instance, Selena Gomez lost almost 2 million and Ariana Grande lost almost 3 million.
am I the only one who noticed Ariana lost 3 million followers on Instagram in one day? pic.twitter.com/pKU491UxX1
— тεssα (@grandetears) February 13, 2019
Here are some other Instagram users expressing their frustration on Twitter —
why did I just lose over half a million followers @instagram wyd sis
— James Charles (@jamescharles) February 13, 2019
so I just lost like 4K on Instagram and it unfollowed like 100 people within a matter of minutes? what’s going on ?
like I’m not mad about my follower count cause I’d rather have less spam followers and better engagement but like why is it unfollowing people?!
— stephanie duran (@ItsSteephh) February 13, 2019
