The Celebrities Who Lost the Most Followers — and Earnings — From the Instagram Bot Purge

This year, Instagram purged the app of online bots, and celebrities were hit hard. Experts calculated which celebrities were the most impacted based on their follower counts. This can also mean that advertisers will see that their reach is not worth as much. For these celebrities, this could translate to a loss in earnings on each post.

An Instagram bot purge has impacted these celebrities more than most

Instagram regularly deletes bots and fake accounts from its site. This May, they cleared out millions of accounts.

“As part of our routine process to remove inactive accounts, some Instagram accounts may have noticed updates to their follower counts,” a Meta spokesperson reportedly shared with Pop Base. “Active followers remain unaffected, and any restored suspended account will be included in the count again after verification. Thank you for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

Research by experts at Hopp by Wix examined the celebrity accounts that took the biggest hits because of the bot purge. At the top of the list was Cristiano Ronaldo, who saw an 8,694,187 drop in followers. While this is only a small portion of his followers, they estimate that this could result in a $30,000 loss per sponsored post. This could lead to a $240,000 loss each year.

Selena Gomez lost 8,068,841 followers, which could also result in a $30,000 loss per post. Ariana Grande, who lost 7,865,189 followers, could see a $20,000 loss per post, as could Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner.

Other celebrities who lost millions of followers include Dwayne Johnson, Lionel Messi, Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, and Taylor Swift. All of these celebrities could lose close to $20,000 per post.