Meta ramps up fight against bots: Instagram and Threads mass-remove fake accounts

Instagram and Threads users report that followers are unfollowing them en masse.

The founder of the charity of the same name, Serhiy Prytula reported that he lost 15,000 followers in one evening.

Three thousand followers gone on the page of singer Alyona Alyona,five thousand fewer — for blogger Saba Musina. 

At the same time Instagram blocked the page of blogger Ksyusha Meneken.

Dexerto noted that footballers Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo lost more than 13 million followers due to the mass purge.

How Meta explains the blocking

So far the company that owns Instagram, Meta, has not officially commented on the purge. However, in March 2026 the company announced new tools to combat fraud, bots and fake accounts.

In its official statement Meta said it actively uses AI systems to detect suspicious profiles, fake activity, scam schemes and accounts that impersonate brands, celebrities or public figures.

The company says that in 2025 alone it removed more than 10.9 million accounts on Facebook and Instagram that were linked to “scam centers” and coordinated suspicious activity.

Meta also said that in 2025 it removed more than 159 million ads that violated the platform’s rules on fraud and manipulation. Most of them, the company said, were blocked before users filed complaints.

Meta notes that the new AI tools analyze text, images, account behavior and other signals to more quickly detect bots, fake pages and scam networks.

Also read: Meta will cut 10% of jobs to offset Mark Zuckerberg’s AI spending