Load the Game

Instagram Rapture complete, millions of accounts deleted

• Egon Kilin
• December 19th, 2014

Instagram is now a lot emptier as millions upon millions of accounts have been deleted recently. If you have an account on the site you need not worry because only those that were posting spam have been deleted. Then again, if your account was indeed posting spam then it’s probably gone. This event has been called the Instagram Rapture by many users who were likely drawing a parallel to the biblical prophecy in which believers will be separated by non-believers. Only here we’re talking about separating legit accounts from spam accounts. Speaking of believers, or rather “beliebers” in this case, pop singer Justin Bieber was hit hard by the cleansing as he reportedly lost about 3.5 million followers overnight.

As bad as that may sound (or good, depending on whether you like him or not), some people have it even worse. Rapper Akon apparently lost no less than 56% of his total followers as a result of the Instagram Rapture. Another rapper who goes by the name of Ma$e lost more than a million followers himself and subsequently deleted his account after it was reported that he paid money in order to get more followers. A lot of people took the news pretty hard, but others seemed rather unaffected and even joked about it. Actor Matt Gorry for example said that “I’ll honour the memory of each of my 11k spam Instagram followers that I lost with the lighting of candles. Well, one candle. I only have one.”

Unsurprisingly, Instagram itself wasn’t sparred by the purge either and may actually have been the most affected as their official account lost more than 18 million followers. While this move may come as a shock to some, the company actually warned users about this a while ago. “We’ve been deactivating spammy accounts from Instagram on an ongoing basis to improve your experience,” wrote CEO Kevin Systrom. “As part of this effort, we will be deleting these accounts forever, so they will no longer be included in follower counts. This means that some of you will see a change in your follower count.”