Instagram users experience uncertain account suspensions and drop in followers

Nov 1, 2022

Globally, various celebrities and influencers have observed massive drops in their follower count on Instagram. Users have been blocked out of their own accounts, with a notification that says their account is suspended.

Instagram’s suspended accounts either have no access to their account at all or are reinstating their access after multiple verifications. Users also have the option to counter the suspension within 30 days. The drop in follower counts that several users are observing may also be a consequence of Instagram account suspensions.

This was first touted to be a mass wipeout of accounts, and several memes comparing Zuckerberg to Thanos started surfacing, along with a wave of reactions, memes, and tweets that landed on Twitter. Instagram later informed users that it has become aware of this situation and looking into it.

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This rested the speculations of a mass wipeout, and it was later found that a bug caused the issue disabling users from accessing their accounts. The platform also informed users that the change in follower count is temporary.

Global outages on Instagram are getting more frequent than before, the last outage occurred on September 2022, and it not only affects the leisure time of users, it also affects brands and creators using the platform for business or professional purposes. Especially ads executed during this 9-15 hour window would fail on several metrics as the exposure of these ads is drastically affected by the outages.