05/09/2026
LOOK: These celebrities lost millions of fake followers! 👀
Instagram just ran one of its biggest bot purges ever, and the numbers are wild.
Overnight, millions of followers disappeared from some of the platform's biggest accounts!
Cristiano Ronaldo lost around 6 to 8 million.
Beyoncé dropped roughly 4.4 million.
BLACKPINK lost around 8 to 10 million.
BTS around 6 to 7 million.
Ariana Grande somewhere between 5 and 7 million.
Kylie Jenner and Selena Gomez both lost around 5 million each.
The Rock dropped an estimated 2 to 3 million.
Kim Kardashian lost roughly 1.5 to 2 million.
Meta confirmed the cleanup was part of ongoing efforts to remove inactive, spam, and suspicious accounts.
But this doesn't automatically mean these celebrities bought fake followers.
Large accounts naturally attract bots over time, and a purge this size sweeps them all out at once regardless of how they got there.
And counterintuitively, losing bot followers can actually be good for creators.
Engagement rate goes up when dead accounts are removed, making the remaining audience more valuable to brands and algorithms!
So, yes, your favorite celebrity might have fewer followers today.
But the ones left are actually there... 🤷♀️
