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Photo-sharing application Instagram caused outrage recently as the platform deleted millions of accounts believed to be posting spam.
Regular users criticised the action, taken to limit automated spam and to prevent legitimate users buying followers – the platform’s version of friends who can like and comment on photos posted by those they follow – which has been dubbed the ‘Instagram Rapture’.
The buying of followers is a practice employed by companies and celebrities to appear more popular and thus increase their exposure.
The biggest celebrity losers were Candian pop singer Justin Bieber, who found himself 3,538,228 followers lighter, and rapper Akon who had 56 per cent of his followers culled. Ironically, Instagram’s personal account itself lost 18,880,211 followers – a third of its fanbase.
The site, owned by Facebook, is now more popular than Twitter with 300 million legitimate users and over 70 million photos and videos shared per day and is the fastest-growing social media platform worldwide, with particular popularity in the Middle East.
In a blog post earlier this year, Instagram had warned its users that the mass deletion was incoming, but it was only on December 18 that the axe fell.
Chief executive and founder Kevin Systrom said: “We’ve been deactivating spam accounts from Instagram on an ongoing basis to improve user experience.
“As part of this effort, Instagram will continue to delete these accounts forever, so they will no longer be included in follower counts. This means that many users will see a change in follower count. This shouldn’t affect engagement from authentic accounts that like and comment on your posts.”
Many users directed harsh words at the site after seeing drastic drops in their followers, but bosses have promised that only spam accounts – automated robots scripted to post certain comments on pictures – and ‘dead’ accounts (those totally inactive for a long period) will be removed.
