Sam Pinto loses 4k Instagram followers in 3 hours —and she's not alone

UPDATED 4:30pm Model-actress Sam Pinto is irate after figuring out she lost about 14,000 of her followers on photo-sharing site Instagram in three hours.

 

Pinto took to Twitter Thursday night to question Instagram about the sudden loss in the number of her followers.

 

Wth. I lost 14k followers in ig in 3 hours?! What's going on istagram?

— Sam Pinto (@SamPinto_) December 18, 2014

 

As of Friday noon, Pinto's Instagram account had 488,000 followers.

However, in a follow-up tweet posted Friday afternoon, Pinto said she had overestimated the number by a very large margin.

Okay I just lost 4k followers and not 14k. Lol. I overreacted. Haha

— Sam Pinto (@SamPinto_) December 19, 2014

 

In any case, Pinto is not alone: she is just one of several celebrities whose follower count on Instagram took a big hit.

 

Instagram earlier said in a blog post it will permanently delete spam accounts so they will no longer be included in follower counts.

 

"This means that some of you will see a change in your follower count," it said.

 

A report on Business Insider said Instagram's crackdown has prompted some users to ask the company to stop eliminating accounts.

 

It said popular Instagrammers like Kendall and Kylie Jenner lost hundreds of thousands of followers while many celebrities have lost millions. 

 

The report said the number of Justin Bieber's Instagram followers fell by 3.5 million in the past 24 hours while Akon went from 4.3 million to 1.9 million.

 

"Rapper Ma$e lost so many followers he decided to delete his account entirely. According to one Twitter user, Ma$e went from 1.6 million followers to 100k in a matter of 20 minutes," it added.

 

The report quoted Josh Ostrovsky, a popular Instagram member, as saying the Instagram "bloodbath is hilarious."

 

"This should be a national Holiday. We all know who bought followers, so today just corroborated everyone's suspicions. So many people losing their followers, watching their digital worlds crumble. Today is so fun," he said.

 

On the other hand, Business Insider cited an email from an Instagram spokesperson who reiterated they were simply removing deactivated spam accounts.

 

"This guideline includes repetitive comments, as well as service manipulation in order to self-promote, and extends to commercial spam comments, such as discount codes or URLs to websites," the spokesperson said, citing Instagram's guidelines. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News