'Unexplained' loss of followers on social media: What you should know

Facebook users have reported losing followers on their accounts for unexplained reasons. [Standard, file]

Facebook users are reporting losing followers on their accounts for unexplained reasons.

The most recent trend is affecting accounts with a high number of followers.

Some Facebook users are claiming that Meta, the social media site's parent company, is introducing new measures to combat internet bots.

Though Facebook is yet to issue a formal statement, an online user, Collins Wanderi suggested that the social media platform had embarked on removing bots from users' profiles.

"Nobody has lost any followers. Meta has introduced measures meant to confirm accounts and stem bots. This has impacted on the number of followers on public profiles for all individual accounts," said Wanderi.

What are internet bots?

According to www.cloudflare.com, an internet bot is a computer programme that runs on a network.

The bots are programmed to automatically do certain actions, such as crawling webpages, chatting with users, or attempting to break into user accounts.

Some are used to generate fake followers on social media platforms.

Others might click on social ads in feeds to eat up your social media advertising budget.

Some malicious actors use bot-operated social accounts to spread rumours and disinformation about your company and products online.

Companies like Facebook uses a technology called "Deep Entity Classification".

With it, Facebook algorithms can detect fake accounts based on several factors.