Instagram Clears Up Fake Followers:

Within the last few hours, Instagram has finally done what it’s been threatening to do for ages – it’s cleaned up all of the false, spammy accounts typically associated with the ‘buying followers’ movement. In other words, any account that was created solely for people to boost their presence for popularity reasons, is gone. Vanished. Hopefully that means no more spammy comments on any of our posts? Well, perhaps not. But we live in hope.

I’ve just checked my Instagram feed and noticed that I’ve dropped about 60 followers. I was a bit surprised if I’m honest – I’ve literally never bought a follower in my life and if I had, a paltry 686 (but who’s counting) wouldn’t exactly be good value for my money. However, I’ve ‘suffered’ just as much as anyone, probably hit by people/bots/aliens following me in the hope of a follow back. In some ways I’m glad – I don’t want spammy followers, random men asking to be my husband or girls asking me to like all their pictures. I also want to know I have integrity and actual, legitimate engagement on what I post.

For all those who pride themselves on ‘Internet Fame’ though, what does this mean? I’ve just had the pleasure of going on the profile of somebody who I used to know and seeing that their 35,000 followers have now dropped to a more modest 17,000. I’d rejoice, but remember me over here with my comparably tiny (now even smaller) following! So, I can’t really be that smug.

People follow popular accounts. Would my ‘old buddy old pal’ have ever accrued 17,000 followers without a few paid ones thrown into the mix? Probably not, in fairness. So although he’s lost almost half of his count (and potentially credibility), he’s actually built up a pretty good ‘real’ following in the meantime to counteract that. The concept of an Internet celebrity might SEEM ridiculous, but it works just like any other kind – the more people are perceived to like someone, the more elusive and desirable they become, regardless about how that perception may have been created. And that’s precisely what’s happened here. 

You can say followers don’t matter, and in the grand scheme of things, they don’t. But to PR people, sometimes they actually do. In the blogger world that I’ve started to inhabit, the number of Twitter and Instagram followers a person has can make a direct difference to whether a brand works with someone. That affects whether they get gifted, or sent to do really cool things. All in exchange for interaction from the followers. In our modern world, this is the new marketing, and it’s pretty awesome - if you can actually help build a brand.

It’s not like Facebook at the moment, where there’s an algorithm. Buying fake ‘likes’ can be detrimental to what real fans actually see. However, Instagram isn’t that sophisticated (yet), so their extra followers weren’t really harming them all this time. As long as they looked popular, did it matter?

Some of those people might find they’ve lost those opportunities today, whilst others, like the guy I knew, might realize that they were actually pretty savvy in doing what they did. It was in some ways, although greedy, kind of strategic. Sure, they were exposed as a fake, but does anyone (except Little Miss Detective over here) really care? 

If Twitter’s next, there’s bound to be a few red faces all around. But once someone’s perceived to be ‘big’ anyway, people come naturally, and so I suspect for a lot of the truly ‘socially famous’, this might not make a huge difference at all. 

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