Here’s the Shocking Reason Why Celebrities Suddenly Lost Millions of Their Instagram Followers

BuzzMay 27, 2019

Some celebrities like Ariana Grande and Kylie Jenner noticed a bizarre event where they lost an astounding three million followers on their Instagram accounts. The reason? It’s because of a weird Instagram bug.

The Bug

According to Cosmopolitan‘s report, they noticed how Grande and Jenner’s Instagram accounts suddenly lost 3 million followers each. Grande has over 145 million followers worldwide. However, it tumbled down to 142 million last Wednesday. Meanwhile, Jenner’s followers went down to 124 million compared to its original 127 million followers.

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Both Jenner and Grande have the most followed accounts on Instagram.

Other celebrities also noticed a dip in their Instagram followers. Selena Gomez, for example, lost around 2 million followers in the same night. Meanwhile, famous Instagram influencers like James Charles also suffered from losing 500,000 followers. While these numbers might not be a big deal to these celebrities, it definitely is for influencers, especially since they rely on their followers to make a living.

The Explanation

Instagram published a tweet last Wednesday addressing their users’ concerns. They said they were aware of the bizarre bug that dipped their users’ followers count. The management assured their clients their team had been working hard to solve the issue as soon as possible.

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Instagram declined to state the reason for the strange follower count bug that happened last Wednesday.

Instagram also posted a follow-up tweet stating they resolved the issue as of 12 p.m. ET, last Thursday. They also issued an apology for the inconvenience the bug caused to its users. They understood it was a frustrating experience and they promise it will never happen again. Instagram’s spokeswoman also told in an interview with Fox News, their development team already fixed the said bug and the issue should never persist by now.

Previous Instagram Bugs

Aside from the recent issue that affected Instagram users’ follower count, the giant social media platform also experienced a major security flaw last year. Last November 2018, the users received a notification stating Instagram may have exposed their passwords due to a security flaw.

The said bug caused an alarm to millions of users all over the world as their information got compromised.
The said security breach stemmed from Instagram’s “download your data” feature. It lets users download their personal information and see how Instagram collects its data. The said feature was created to comply with European data-privacy as well as fulfilling their customers’ demand to download their data offline that served as their backup, especially for those users who were sensitive when it comes to their privacy.

The Notice

According to the notice, users’ passwords were at risk of getting exposed by including it on Instagram’s URL while accessing their accounts on web browsers. It means if you’re browsing Instagram on a computer open to the public, the other users can view your password just by looking at the link and they can access your account without you realizing it.

An Instagram spokesperson released a statement they discovered the bug while assessing their internal networks. They were also quick to assure the public it only affected a small portion of its users’ accounts.

The Concern

Sophos security firm’s research scientist Chet Wisniewski commented that Instagram could’ve prevented the said flaw if they used the right encryption technology to store passwords. He also adds the only way your passwords would show in the URL link is if you save it in plain text, which is a taboo in the security industry.

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The security analysts got alarmed of these security breach trend that’s been happening in social media platforms lately.

Chet Wisniewski expresses his concern over the flaws committed by giant social media platforms recently. Aside from Instagram, Facebook also faced serious security issues when the Analytica scandal erupted in early 2018. The said leak compromised the information of more than 30 million Facebook users worldwide.