Celebrity Instagram accounts hit hard by purge

Pop sensation Justin Bieber went to bed last night with a pretty healthy ego and a massive Instagram following; 23.8 million, in fact.

Both took a major hit overnight.

Bieber was the biggest celebrity loser of Thursday night's "Instapurge," the systematic deletion of fake accounts on Instagram. Bieber lost 3.5 million followers in the move, or 14.8 percent of his count, according  to data compiled by Zach Allia, a Boston-based app developer.

Other celebrities who fell victim to the Instapurge include Kim Kardashian, who lost 1.3 million followers, 5.5 percent of her crowd; and singer Beyoncé, who lost 831,971 followers, or 3.7 percent. Among the 100 accounts on Instagram, the average number of followers lost was 671,789, according to the data.

The data was compiled from public information on Instagram, Allia said. "I have over 300,000 followers on Instagram, and for months I kept on receiving messages saying I'd (lost) some followers."

Allia added that he wanted to see how his loss of fake followers would compare to that of the Top 100 Instagram accounts. "Fake accounts follow popular accounts to make it seem like they're real," he said.

Even though the Instapurge deleted millions of fake accounts, "It's still kind of hard to know who bought followers," said Allia.

Here is a chart of the Top 10 Instagram accounts and how the Instapurge affected them: