This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American You're looking around on Twitter. There's an ...

Instagram's bot cleanup caused Kylie Jenner, Christiano Ronaldo, Virat Kohli, Priyanka Chopra, and other stars to lose millions of followers in a dramatic social media reshuffle.

A large-scale purge of bot and inactive accounts on Instagram has reportedly caused thousands of users, including celebrities, to lose followers.

Do you suspect that your Instagram follower list is filled with unknown or suspicious accounts? If yes, then you’re not alone. Spam and bot followers have become a common problem, often affecting ...

Twitch has discovered over 7.5 million bot accounts that have been inflating streamer stats, the Amazon-owned company tweeted. It has now started removing those accounts and warned users that "you may ...

The discovery of a massive botnet can start with finding a few fake Twitter followers, report Duo researchers investigating the process of identifying and analyzing automated accounts. Earlier this ...

The numbers are staggering. Global superstars are watching their social media empires shrink. High-profile accounts across music, sport, and politics have been hit. And that’s because X, the platform ...

Businesses, celebrities, and content creators alike lost large swaths of Instagram followers this week due to a platform update that removed inactive accounts. For some profiles, including Nike’s and ...

On Instagram, manufacturing fake followers is a ubiquitous tactic, one that's churned out at least 95 million near-perfect human forgeries for you to brush past in the digital hallways, unaware. You ...

Meta-owned social media platform Instagram has reportedly removed millions of bot and inactive accounts in a major cleanup drive in 2026, triggering sharp drops in follower counts for several ...