You might want to check your Instagram following, because after a mass-delete earlier in the week lots of people have lost followers in the thousand. If, like me, you're following sits firmly around 650 people made up largely of your aunts, friends and the occasional creepy older guy who leaves obscure emoji's under your photos then don't worry, you probably have nothing to sweat about.
But if you are slightly bigger - say, Kensington Palace - you might have seen a more dramatic drop. Hilariously the official account of the Royals lost 150,000 followers from it's Instagram account earlier in the week.
An Instagram source told Hello magazine that this was only due to a glitch, and 150k of Kensington Palace's followers have now been restored. It's likely the mistake occurred because it's rumoured Instagram are taking steps to limit fake followers at the moment - including deleting fake or inactive accounts (yes, in case you were wondering those are all of the accounts linked to that page that suddenly follows you called @get_followersfast380!$3). In a statement Instagram have said "we're aware of an issue causing a change in account follower numbers for some people right now. We're working quickly to fix this".
At 7.1 million followers though, the glitch barely made a dent in the Royal's account which is used as the official page for Meghan Markle (when her friends aren't doing the job for her by posting her avocado on toast flatlays), Kate Middleton, and Princes Harry and William. But compared to others, the loss in the Royals following was actually fairly minimal: Nike lost a staggering 1.1 million followers with Katy Perry lost 900,000 to the glitch.
Why is this happening? While this time it might be due to an error, Instagram did announce their intention to crack down on fake accounts in November. In a blog post, they wrote "We've built machine learning tools to help identify accounts that use these services and remove the inauthentic activity. This type of behaviour is bad for the community, and third-party apps that generate inauthentic likes, follows and comments violate our Community Guidelines and Terms of Use."
Basically, as long as you're not buying followers through a third party you should be ok. And yes, that still justifies enjoying a bit of schadenfreude over certain accounts that have permanently lost a good few Ks of their followings and who now have a bit of awkward explaining to do. But it appears that Kensington Palace isn't one of them.