Why Ariana Grande just lost three million followers

Instagram went full Marie Kondo last night

The social media platform has deleted all inactive accounts and bots (defined as accounts that haven’t been used or logged into in the last six months or more), resulting in celebrities and influencers alike losing hundreds and thousands (if not millions) of followers. Those affected include Selena Gomez, who lost a cool two million followers, and James Charles, who is 500,000 followers down.

Instagram said in a statement: ‘We’re taking a number of steps to limit this kind of unwelcome behaviour. Accounts we identify will receive an in-app message alerting them that we've removed the inauthentic activity given to their account from others. We will also ask them to secure their account by changing their password. Accounts that use these types of apps share their username and password, which is sometimes used to give inauthentic likes, follows and comments to others.’

My thoughts on this are, it might be annoying and even debilitating for influencers and celebrities out there who make money off of their large followings – but a real follower base is more active and leads to higher engagement then a large fake following. As micro-influencers become more coveted to brands I think this is a positive move for Instagram, and helps with people hogging prime usernames they never use.