Last week, Instagram warned its followers that it would begin getting rid of all fake and spam accounts on their social media service. On Thursday, the followed through with their plan, and evidently deleted millions of fake accounts, leading to massive drops in follower counts.

Celebrities and other heavily frequented accounts were especially devastated by this turn of events. They could do nothing, but watch helplessly as their follower count dropped dramatically.

Justin Bieber is just one example of a celebrity who lost a chunk of his followers. His "Belieber" count of followers dropped by 3.5 million according to software developer Zach Allia.

Ariana Grande also lost 1.5 million fake fan accounts. One anonymous Instagram user, chiragchirag78, went from 4 million fans to only 8 overnight. That user ended up deleting his account and disappearing from the Instagram world entirely.

Instagram's actions are currently a great source of conflict, but most of the damage seems to have been dealt directly to the company. In the end Instagram lost 19 million followers in the process of eliminating the spam accounts.

The "Instapurge", as angry users call it, has left millions of former Instagram lovers feeling slighted and bare of followers. "They deleted 7k followers from me," one Instagram user admitted.

Several responded to Instagram's actions by posting insults and profanities on Instagram's official account. However, Instagram insists that it has done nothing wrong.

According to Business Insider, Instagram complains that it was only deleting the spam accounts that were already deactivated. So, the spam accounts that were following the famous and the not-as-famous were already down, and Instagram just removed them from the website permanently.

CEO Kevin Systrom implores angry users to understand that deleting spam accounts is really for the best, he said, "As more people join, keeping Instagram authentic is critical-it's a place where real people share real moments."