Just wanted to share that several influencers I’ve been tracking have all started losing followers abruptly around late April-early May. I’m curious if anyone else has observed the same
I wonder if this is simply a bot purge or the beginning of the end of organic reach going the way of Facebook.
I’ve noticed this too and I also thought it could be a purge but Instagram doesn’t have a full staff right now that could be taking care of something like that (thats why all the big pages are getting hit with comment bots more than ever) and I have seen a lot of innapropiate accounts such as gore, porn, etc. not getting taken down even though they have been reported many times. So honestly I don’t know why this is happening, maybe people are getting bored on Instagram and moving to TikTok??
People may be moving on to tiktok. It seems weird that it’s all around the same date though
FB and insta are too greedy. These people think in stocks and stocks only. It’s time for them to make big bucks off of insta i noticed they’re pushing allot of ads lately in stories. Every 3’rd story is a sponsored ad now, sooo frustrating and bad user experience. No wonder people are flocking out the door.
No, I don’t think so. Think of the logic – you have hundreds/hundreds of thousands of followers and ya just give up and leave? –
Nobody is flocking. This change came in 2017 and you just now notice?
I started to notice this January 1 on some of my accounts and then it hit the majority. Is this temp or perm? The greatest impact came around March 15, when I started losing them. Sooner or later we will find out why
I don’t know –
January- Feb == about 10 of my accounts.
March – nearly 2/3 of my accounts
April – almost all.
These are the patterns of the accounts losing.
Slow fake purge?
Show least interactive feature being used?
We all have noticed likes down also. Take away the bots, you take away the fake likes to.
Same with follows.
It could also be a reduction in reach – hence less follows, more unfollows.
Funny is the good active high ER accounts still gaining massive on all sizes
I wonder where we go from here. It seems unintelligent for Instagram to do this because, although they make more money in the short term, they ruin the user experience. Even people with small personal accounts hate losing followers. And hate excessive ads.
Edit: looking at all the accounts I’m following, this is occurring almost globally (the follower loss/severely slowed growth)
First they removed likes count, which was a core feature of instagram. Think of it like removing bubbles from a coke… it just isn’t coke anymore… sure i’ll go with pepsy if that’s the only option i have with bubbles, even if it’s not the coke i was used to at least it has the bubbles and the feeling. (insta > tiktok for creators).
Second, they’ve messed up the whole Follow/Unfollow/Feed feature. Things used to be simple. I follow a page = I want to see the sh"t they post on my feed. When i get tired of what they post i simply Unsubscribe, Unfollow. That’s how this world works and has always worked, u can’t just create an algorith that decides for the people what to show in their feed based on what they’ve liked, sure you can do it at a certain degree say 10% but people are usually unpredictable and like to be surprised, impressed, experience new things on their feed. It’s like recording what i eat everyday and then after a month of analysis u start serving me only eggs in the AM because i used to eat egs most of the times, NO… that’s not how people function, people need to decide for themselves that they want to eat eggs and then they’ll eat the eggs and be satisfied with THEIR decision, sure you can better serve them the ads you want but stick to that, use the algorithm in your advantage and just for serving them the ads don’t mess up with what they’ve followed and chose to see. It just makes the Follow feature useless and the feed boring. I follow 140 people on my personal insta. I’m only being shown what 10-15 people i follow post. This is very stupid and boring for me because it’s repetitive and you make it very hard for me to see what the other 100 people i follow post because if i keep scrooling down my feed guess what?! i’m being shown all the posts of those 10-15 short list your stupid algo created. Instagram used to be a place where i see in my feed what accounts i followed post, since that is my interest. Don’t worry instagram, i’ll unfollow if i don’t want to see things i’m not interested in anymore, don’t make me like stuff just to keep it in my feed jeez, we’re not all extroverts, some people don’t hit the like button but still want to see stuff you know…
I bet to venture, they are losing because of this as many don’t/will not pay. COVID is the unknown factor.
If that was not effecting everything – we can probaly make a good guess why. I don’t know honestly.
This sounds more like it, i agree
nope. They changed the feed 3 years ago. BTW, you still can see EVERY post a page did – you just have to scroll down sometimes deeps.
You think they’re losing money during covid? I would’ve thought the opposite because everyone is at home and has more time to browse social media
Also, you still don’t have a like count? Last I heard some were regaining the ability to see them. I still can @cromatic
i am saying they are losing money if COVID was not here. They still probably will make a profit, possibly have more income to. Traveling companies can’t advertise. Gyms have no reason to advertise, bakery shops really have no need to generate traffic. The list goes on. Ya gotta remember the majority of business are still brick and mortar. Why do they need to advertise if the doors are closed and sales down?
Here in Europe we still have them but i know for certain a few big cities in the states don’t get the privilege… Likes are very important for creators… hide their likes to the people and they’ll move their content elsewhere. It’s simple marketing lol…
That’s true. Then this may just be a short term solution. I could see the constantly losing followers driving people away though.
And I agree likes are important @cromatic
I agree but as I scroll down the feed it shows/reshows all recent posts of those 10-15 accounts (posts from past days too), and if each of those accounts post 20 posts a day (say you follow Memezar and Pubity), just imagine… and this is all because I frikin liked a few posts of those accounts?..Makes me want to unfollow those accounts even though I don’t want to… lol I still want to see memes, memes are fun. I want to keep them on my top feed but 10% not 90% of my top feed. Just… Frikin’ shut the stupid algo off and let me manage my account instagram… Let me manage what I want to see through the Follow/Unfollow feature. It feels like they’ve took everything away from instagram and it’s this new app that decides for me what I want to see…
What I’m saying is maybe it’s what slowly drives people away from their platform, this on top of unorgsnicaly limiting our reach and removing bot accounts along with their likes and follows. Idk, Instagram is not Facebook, Instagram people are the ones who ran away from Facebook, or what they’re doing now is slowly turning it into FB…
What @cromatic is saying is so fundamentaly wrong that I don’t know where to begin, so I won’t do it, but I would recommend him to do a good research before jumping into conclusions.
I won’t ever try to “defend” or “attack” IG for many of us is an strong platform that allows us to run a businnes so I will say only one thing, @cromatic change your attitute and base your opinions on facts gathered via testing as we all do here. 
With such a negativity and egocentric thinking you won’t get too far. (did you notice how many say you said “I”? )
Cheers.
Not defending or attacking, and yes IG is a good platform for all of us but it’s not through their kindness we exist lol, it’s just a platform that used to be good, till they started tweeking it till it got where it is which is in a awful state to be honest for both users and marketers. IG is a good platform for us the marketers because each of us worked hard, everyone in their own niche, I have nothing to thank IG for but myself for overcoming all the buls’it they’ve been throwing left and right to be honest with you. 
Speaking of likes… does it seem weird for a 124k account to have 20% engagement? It just seems to be an outlier in this time of decreased likes and follows. This is a personal account/non-meme account
nothing odd – there are those that have it that high that occurs naturaly – i think one of the kim K sisters have like 10% – or one of the famous ones, maybe not them – well into the millions of followers. I see 200k+ accounts with 10-20 % too, rare but happens more than we think
I wonder how they do it. They would probably make for a good follow source 
or, like source, in my case
