You’ve had your Instagram for over two years and you’ve managed to rack up over 1,000 followers. Now Instagram decides to clean up and you’re down to 700.

This situation is all too familiar to millions of Instagram’s users.

For a week now, Instagram has warned all of its users that there might be a change to their number of followers because they were planning on getting rid of spam and inactive accounts.

There was an announcement in Instagram’s “Activity” tab and a link to explain further what might place.

The link explained that the only accounts that were going to be removed were the ones that did not follow the Community Guidelines. There are five: 1. Post your own photos and videos, 2. Keep your clothes on, 3. Be respectful, 4. Don’t spam, and 5. Have fun.

Instagram kept its word and people woke up to fewer followers Dec 18.

“I had 480 followers as of last night, and this morning I had 424,” Victoria Berry said.

Some students were not majorly affected but others saw a major decrease.

“I lost over 1,500 followers. I know I had a lot of ‘ghost followers’ and I’m assuming that’s what they got rid of,” Taylor Squier said.

Some students are very angry about this sudden change and don’t think it’s fair for Instagram to take away followers.

“I’m so annoyed by the whole situation. I don’t think I even had any spam accounts that followed me, I’m pretty sure I knew them all. I liked the amount of followers I had,” Kodell King said.

Others feel that the clean-up was much needed and way overdue.

“There are so many inactive accounts that take up usernames and space. It was about time they got rid of them. I lost some followers but if Instagram only deleted the bad accounts, I don’t even care,” Grant Waters said.

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, though, because Instagram claims they did this for about half of their users in April and they were just finishing the remaining half. Instagram states on their informational website that they will continue to fix these things and take into consideration their users’ suggestions.

by DESIREE STONE