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Instagram carried out a massive purge of fake accounts, bots, and inactive profiles this week, resulting in the two biggest stars of world football losing millions of followers: Cristiano Ronaldo lost over nine million and Lionel Messi nearly 6.7 million in just two days, according to data from the analysis platform Social Blade reported this week.
The operation, dubbed by users on social media as the "Great Purge of 2026," focused primarily on Wednesday, May 6, and continued today, Friday.
Ronaldo, who had 673,116,448 followers on April 25, suffered his biggest blow on Wednesday with a loss of 6,622,220 followers in a single day.
This Friday, he lost another 2,621,324 followers, leaving him with 664,073,783 followers and a total loss of over 9.2 million during the period, according to Social Blade records.
Messi, who had 512,579,531 followers on April 25, saw 4,807,296 followers disappear on Wednesday and another 1,903,755 this Friday, leaving him with 505,844,007 followers.
Despite the losses, both footballers maintain their positions in the global ranking: Ronaldo is the second most followed profile on Instagram, and Messi is third, just behind the official account of the platform.
The purge was not limited to the two soccer stars. Instagram deleted millions of followers from various accounts of celebrities around the world, with Kylie Jenner being the most affected, losing between 14 and 15 million followers.
The official Instagram account lost nearly nine million followers during the operation.
Among the impacted figures are BTS, Virat Kohli, Priyanka Chopra, Logan Paul, Ryan Reynolds, Donald Trump, Pope Francis, and Justin Bieber.
In the Cuban context, the influencer Sandra Cires was the most affected with a loss of 55,278 followers, followed by Lisandra Silva (-21,844), Imaray Ulloa (-21,093), Pollito Tropical (-19,875), and La Mariposa (-13,055).
A spokesperson for Meta described the action as "part of our routine process to delete inactive accounts" and clarified that "active followers are not affected, and any suspended account restored will be added after verification."
The company employs artificial intelligence systems to detect suspicious profiles, fraudulent activity, and scam schemes, estimating that between 10% and 15% of its active accounts are fake or spam, according to its Transparency Report from February 2026.
By 2025, Instagram had already removed more than 500 million fake accounts, as part of a broader trend among major platforms to purge artificially inflated metrics.
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