On Thursday, May 7, social media users were surprised to see their follower numbers drop significantly overnight. The dip had nothing to do with any public scandal, it was the result of what many are already calling the Great Purge of 2026, after Meta initiated a routine process to remove inactive and bot-driven accounts from Instagram.
As detailed by LADbible, household names across the globe saw their counts shrink as Meta worked to clear out accounts that weren’t authentic. A spokesperson from Meta confirmed this was part of a routine cleanup of inactive accounts, adding that active followers remain unaffected and that any suspended account restored after verification will be added back to the follower count.
This isn’t the first time the company has focused on platform integrity. Meta has been consistently deploying more advanced AI systems to improve content enforcement and overall user experience.
Millions of followers wiped in a single sweep
The scale of the cleanup was significant. Cristiano Ronaldo, widely considered one of football’s all-time greats, reportedly saw his follower count drop by 6,622,220. Taylor Swift, 36, lost around five million followers, with her count now sitting at 275 million. Kylie Jenner, 28, reportedly lost 5,071,791 followers, while Kim Kardashian saw a drop of 5,109,246. South Korean boy band BTS and singer Ariana Grande, 32, were each reportedly wiped of seven million followers. Data from Social Blade, a platform that tracks creator statistics and growth, confirmed the decreases across the board.
It wasn’t just celebrities who noticed. Average users also vented frustrations on X, with many reporting their own follower counts dipping. “I deadass lost like 30 followers overnight, I thought I accidentally posted something bad,” one person wrote. Another shared: “I lost 300 followers right after getting to 11K.” A third user, whose account is private, was particularly confused: “My page is private and I rarely ever accepted people I hadn’t at least interacted with once in real life and tell me why I lost 21 followers.”
The cleanup aligns with Meta’s broader integrity goals, as outlined in their H1 2026 integrity reports, amid wider platform-wide crackdowns on fraud and inauthentic behavior. In 2025 alone, the company removed over 159 million scam ads, with 92 percent taken down before anyone reported them. Meta has also been working to disrupt covert influence operations and combat apps that use AI to generate non-consensual images. Between November 2025 and January 2026, over 344,000 ads across Facebook and Instagram promoting such apps were removed. The move to clear out bot accounts follows a broader pattern of platforms tightening authenticity standards, much like the Walmart rollback pricing controversy that recently drew similar scrutiny over misleading numbers.
Meta has confirmed that if a suspended account is restored after verification, its follow will be reinstated. The company also noted it has been testing advanced AI systems to measure violating content prevalence and improve enforcement accuracy. Users who have not purchased fake followers or engaged in bot activity should see no lasting impact, as the platform’s stated aim is to ensure follower counts reflect real, active people. Amid the cleanup, a separate document release made waves online, with a judge unsealing what is claimed to be Epstein’s suicide note, hidden inside a graphic novel.
Published: May 7, 2026 08:00 pm