A lot of big stars got quite a shock when they opened up their social media accounts on Thursday (7 May) – as a large chunk of their audience had bid them au revoir.

A host of household names, including the likes of Taylor Swift and Cristiano Ronaldo, lost millions of Instagram followers overnight.

Although some sort of scandal is usually the reason behind a mass exodus like this, it’s actually the result of something that internet users are dubbing the ‘Great Purge of 2026’.

Apparently, Meta – which is Instagram’s parent company – decided to have something of a clear out over the last 24 hours.

As a result, a host of celebrities have lost a massive chunk of their followings.

Some have been hit harder than others, such as music star Taylor Swift, 36, who is said to have just forfeited a whopping five million followers.

Reality TV star turned businesswoman Kylie Jenner, 28, reportedly lost the same amount.

Wicked actress Ariana Grande, 32, has reportedly been wiped of seven million, as have South Korean boy band BTS.

So, why did Instagram creep in like a thief in the night and rob these lot of these of the legion of followers they have acquired over the years?

Well, rumour has it that Meta has had enough of fake accounts infiltrating the platform, so it decided to show them the door.

According to reports, millions of bot accounts were deleted from Instagram…meaning a lot of peoples follower counts subsequently took a nosedive.

Data from Social Blade, which is a website that tracks daily statistics and growth of content creators, claims that Jenner lost 5,071,791 followers as a result of this.

Her older sibling and SKIMS founder Kim Kardashian took a 5,109,246 hit, while footie legend Cristiano Ronaldo is said to have lost a whopping 6,622,220 followers.

The Portuguese ace has seemingly bore the brunt of Meta’s alleged ‘purge’, but Swift has also lost a significant amount of Instagram supporters too, as her follower count now sits at 275million.

Even average people have been complaining about losing out on followers, as a hot of people took to X to complain that their numbers weren’t looking too good.

“I deadass lost like 30 followers overnight, I thought I accidentally posted something bad,” one person said.

A second complained: “I lost 300 followers right after getting to 11K!”

And a third fumed: “My page is private and I rarely ever accepted people I hadn’t at least interacted with once in real life and tell me why I lost 21 followers.”

A spokesperson from Meta shared some further information about this supposed cull of bot accounts with Tyla.

“As part of our routine process to remove inactive accounts, some Instagram accounts may have noticed updates to their follower counts,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“Active followers remain unaffected, and any restored suspended account will be added back in after verification.”

But if you haven’t been buying bots to up your follower count, you should have nothing to worry about…