Instagram purge costs celebrities millions of followers

Teenagers and celebrities are up in arms after photo sharing app Instagram scrubbed millions of spam accounts and bots.

The crackdown has been called the “Instagram Rapture” or “Instagram Purge” as accounts dropped thousands, and even millions, of followers overnight.

Celebrities hit the hardest include Justin Bieber, who lost a whopping 3.5 million followers, while hip hop star Akon lost more than half almost 56% of his Instagram chums.

Other music stars whose follower count plunged were rappers Tyga and Ma$e, who lost 1.5 million followers.

Kim Kardashian may have failed to break the internet as promised, but she did shed some 1.3 million followers.

While many celebrities and civilian Instagrammers were furious over their free-falling follower count, others revelled in the massacre.

Developer Zach Allia designed the below interactive infographic documenting those who were hit the most brutally in the purge.

The accounts that have been deleted are those which post links and spam - particularly bot accounts.

Internet bots are software applications that perform automated or semi-automated tasks. Recent reports suggest that there are more bots on the internet than there are people on the planet.

Many companies promise users the opportunity to buy a bunch of followers (mostly bot accounts) on social networking sites including Twitter, Instagram and Vine to appear more popular.

Instagram’s latest move means this now appears a risky investment. Users who make money from sponsored posts due to their large follower count also stand to lose out.

Instagram, owned by Facebook, has previously acknowledged that spamming is a problem.

A spokesman said of the purge: “After receiving feedback from members in the Instagram community, we recently fixed an issue that incorrectly included inactive accounts in follower/following lists.

“We believe this will provide a more authentic experience and genuinely reflect people who are actually engaging with each other’s content.”

The Instagram account that lost the most followers - an eye-watering 18 million? Instagram itself.