Cristiano Ronaldo loses three million Instagram followers during bizarre outage

The world's most followed person on Instagram, Cristiano Ronaldo, has lost a staggering number of followers in the wake of a mass outage of the social media platform.

The outage also saw millions of accounts suspended as they 'didn't follow its community guidelines'.

Ronaldo's Instagram follower count has since bounced back to the whopping 493 million he had prior to the massive outage, but other accounts are so far unrestored.

He wasn't the only celebrity impacted.

It is understood that Kylie Jenner saw a drop of 1.1 million followers, Kim Kardashian lost 7.4 million followers, and Taylor Swift saw a drop of 6.7 million.

Those who were suspended by the mass glitch received a message from Instagram that stated: "We suspended your account on October 31, 2022."

The message added: "There are 30 days remaining to disagree with this decision. Your account doesn't follow our Community Guidelines."

The users that clicked through to appeal the decision then faced a black screen with an ever-loading grey circle which seems to be a clear error-out meaning users cannot appeal their ban.

Instagram tweeted about the outage to assure users they were aware and investigating the incident.

The social media platform tweeted: "We're aware that some of you are having issues accessing your Instagram account. We're looking into it and apologise for the inconvenience."

We’ve resolved this bug now – it was causing people in different parts of the world to have issues accessing their accounts and caused a temporary change for some in number of followers. Sorry! 😵‍💫https://t.co/Q1FBOEI97D

— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 31, 2022

Fix the verification code bug. Many people don't have access to their accounts since 31st October. I dont have access too @nikolas_nikolakopoulos #instagramdown

— NNikolako (@NNikolako) November 2, 2022

Many accounts are still down days later, with users taking to Twitter to fume about the problem.

One user tweeted: "Fix the verification code bug. Many people haven't had access to their accounts since 31st October. I don't have access to [mine].

Another said: "It's been two days since my Instagram account has been suspended and I can't get it back. What's happening?"

A third added: "I’m not getting my security code sent to me either, I don't know what’s going on. Now I can’t get on."

Instagram have since tweeted that they have resolved the issue.

Instagram said: "We’ve resolved this bug now – it was causing people in different parts of the world to have issues accessing their accounts and caused a temporary change for some in the number of followers. Sorry!"

We’ve resolved this bug now – it was causing people in different parts of the world to have issues accessing their accounts and caused a temporary change for some in number of followers. Sorry! 😵‍💫https://t.co/Q1FBOEI97D

— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 31, 2022

Thousands have responded to Instagram's tweet, lashing out at them as users are still experiencing issues.

One user said: "You haven't fixed anything."

Another added: "I still can’t log into my account every time I try to log in. It says 'error please wait a few minutes before trying again'. My app logs me out every single time I close the app and apparently it is because I logged in and out too frequently but it is not my fault."

Instagram and its parent company Meta - owned by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg - have been approached for comment.