Instagram Permanently Suspends Roughly 30 Meme Accounts With Millions Of Followers

Instagram has reportedly conducted a purge of roughly 30 meme accounts — or pages that curate and re-share memes from elsewhere across the web.

Permanent suspensions have affected accounts with millions of collective followers, reports Insider, and began rolling out last Thursday and Friday. Some of the affected accounts included spicy.mp4, memeextraordinaire, yerdank, and autist. Many (but not all) of the suspended accounts were also part of a network that enabled Instagrammers to pay to get their accounts promoted on other popular pages — to the tune of between $150 to $200 for a 24-hour promotion.

A spokesperson from Facebook (which owns Instagram) told Insider that although selling the opportunity to be promoted doesn’t violate Instagram’s terms of service, the accounts were suspended for repeatedly attempting to abuse internal processes.

Insider notes that meme accounts frequently face the criticism because they have built brands and fortunes off pilfered content from elsewhere online — often without crediting the originators of the memes that they are repurposing.

Other affected accounts, per The Atlantic reporter Taylor Lorenz, include grandpasgenitals, zuwamba, thespedshed, godsbleach, meme_hummus, bofaballs, yore, sup.david, peteralagha, c6ige, wokeist, dailymemes.exe, deadv1, sourpods, silentmemes, deepfriedlays, suucle, medicalthing, darted, uniquevines, nutted, femalesdoingthings, grinder, babebuddy, laugh.s, and finest.inventions.