Instagram glitch: Ariana Grande and Kylie Jenner lose millions of followers overnight
Instagram is aware of the issue
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Your support makes all the difference.Ariana Grande and Kylie Jenner might be two of the most-followed people on Instagram, but both celebrities lost millions of followers on Wednesday evening.
Grande, 25, dropped from 145 million to 142 million, while Jenner, 21, who had close to 127 million, went down to 124 million.
They weren’t the only ones to suffer a drop in followers – influencers across the platform have noticed a major dip in the last few days.
Beauty vlogger Jame Charles, for example, claimed on Tuesday that he’d lost more half a million followers, writing on Twitter: “Why did I just lose over half a million followers @instagram wyd sis [sic]”.
Meanwhile, musician Curbi asked his fanbase on Twitter if they had lost any Instagram followers, after realising that he’d lost 8,000.
The problem seemed to affect those with smaller followings too, with people on Twitter claiming they’d lost as little as 20 followers.
Instagram responded to the complaints on Wednesday but did not provide an explanation for the issue, writing on Twitter: “We’re aware of an issue that is causing a change in account follower numbers for some people right now.
“We’re working to resolve this as quickly as possible.”
The Facebook-owned app went down on Wednesday in large areas of the UK, Europe and the US. Users were unable to get onto the social media platform and were instead greeted with the message: “Sorry, something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.”
In a subsequent tweet, Instagram added that it was aiming to have fixed the problem by 9am PST on Thursday, which is 5pm in the UK.
Both Grande and Jenner have now returned to their previous follower numbers on the platform, though it’s not clear if this is due to Instagram having rectified the issue or the two women simply acquiring more followers.
The Independent has contacted Instagram for comment.
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