The Great Instagram Purge of 2014 revealed that there are a LOT of 'grammers with fake followers, among them some of your favorite celebs. A similar thing happened to Twitter in 2012, when a study showed that an overwhelming amount of celebrities had fake twitter followers. Who knew so many stars were shelling out for a bigger "audience?"
Some celebrities who have fake Twitter and Instagram followers are completely unexpected, too. Sure, it's easy to believe that Kim Kardashian paid for a few million extra followers, but Oprah?! Even POTUS himself, Barack Obama, isn't 100% clean. Say it isn't so! Here are the biggest celebrities who have fake social media followers. Who surprises you the most?
Celebs Who Were Caught with Fake Followers on Social Media, internet, all people, people, celebrities, controversial, social media,
Akon
Poor Akon — the biggest hit he's had since 2006 was the hit his Instagram account took in 2014. He lost over 56% of his followers. That's a LOT of fake accounts, Akon! With over 3 million bought followers deleted, Akon was the celeb who lost the most followers during the infamous Insta purge.
Barack Obama
Who would've guessed that POTUS (or the person running his social media channels) would stoop so low as to buy followers? That's what one Twitter study suggested — it estimates that 53% of his followers are fake, and 27% are inactive (that's a total of 19.5 million). Not a good look, Mr. President.
Kim Kardashian
Kim Kardashian is one of the most-followed celebrities of all time — her Instagram following alone includes over 73 MILLION devoted fans, waiting with bated breath for the next nude selfie. In 2014, though, Instagram revealed that the reality TV star was (kind of) faking it. She lost 1.3 million, or 5%, of her followers overnight when Instagram purged all fake user accounts. Money can't buy everything, Kim!
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban, billionaire investor and Shark Tank star, apparently thinks money can buy everything — including social media followers. A Twitter study revealed that the Dallas Mavericks owner apparently paid for 59% of his followers, all of which were linked to fake or inactive accounts.
Rihanna
Rihanna, or @badgalriri as she's known on Instagram, has had her ups and downs with the social media giant. Her risqué pictures even led to a deleted account at one point, but now she's back on Insta and has nearly 40 million followers. It's doubtful that all those followers are real, though—when Instagram deleted is fake user accounts back in 2014, Riri lost a whopping 1.2 million followers. Ouch.
Sean Combs
Shady behavior, Diddy! The hip hop mogul's Twitter account mysteriously gained about 185,000 followers in a single day back in 2013. A few months later, the account lost nearly 400,000 followers in one day. Something about that seems fishy.
Shakira
Shakira's hips might not lie, but her social media follower count does! In 2012 it was revealed out of the Latina pop star's 17.9 million Twitter followers, only 21% were authentic, active accounts. Guess Shakira didn't learn her lesson, because she was outed again in 2014 during Instagram's systematic deletion of spam accounts (many of which belong to websites like instabuyagram.com and cheaplikesfollowers.info). Shakira lost almost 150,000 Instagram followers. When will you learn, Shaki?
Andy Cohen
Bravo's Andy Cohen lost 20k Instagram followers when the social media outlet cleaned out their spam accounts. Cohen owned up the follower faux-pas by Tweeting, "“I lost 20k followers in the #InstagramPurge . . . Twitter, next?” At least he's got a sense of humor about it!
Katy Perry
When Statuspeople.com audited Katy Perry's Instagram followers in 2013, they found that a giant 46% of them were actually fake accounts—and another 40% were totally inactive. Mega-embarrassing. Katy didn't learn her lesson though; just a year later she was outed for having nearly 300,000 fake Insta followers too.
Justin Bieber
The Biebs is a controversial pop singer. He's gone from tween idol to douche-y teen to well-loved but troubled pop icon once again, and his social media following has been just as turbulent. He lost a ton of followers in late 2014 when Instagram decided to clean house and delete all just-for-show spam accounts — and there went 3.5 million fake "Bielebers." NBD, since the pop star is back on top with more than 70 million followers again.