If you decide one day that you are sick of seeing someone’s posts on your feed or if they are spamming the stories section of Instagram, then you may go down the route of unfollowing them.
It may well be that you have a batch of accounts that you wish to unfollow and go on a bit of an ‘unfollowing spree’.
If you are in the midst of one of these sprees then you you may want to know just how many accounts you are allowed to unfollow.
In this article, we are going to be looking at exactly that, in addition to suggesting some unfollow alternatives for if you are conscious about hurting somebody’s feelings. Let’s get into it.
How many people can you unfollow on Instagram? In a nutshell
During the first couple of years Instagram, users had a free reign on the amount of accounts they could unfollow in a 24 hour period.
However, in recent years, Instagram has added a policy to their terms and conditions which states that users are limited to only 200 unfollows per 24 hours.
If your accounts is relatively new (we estimate less than a month old) then you will be limited to even fewer unfollows per day.
The official limit is unclear in this instance, but the general consensus is that it is somewhere between 50-150 unfollows per day.
The reason for unfollow limits is unclear but we suspect it is do with Instagram trying to clamp down on bot accounts. Bot accounts look to gain a large following through mass following sprees in the hope for a follow back, before then unfollowing them all a few days later.
With Instagram on the hunt for bot accounts, we would recommend that you actually go nowhere near these limits.
If Instagram spots continuous periods of unfollowing account after account after account, then it is likely going to flag up on their end.
If this happens then you run the risk of your account being temporarily deactivated pending a review or permanently deleted.
How to unfollow accounts on Instagram
Despite not wanting to you unfollow more than 200 accounts a day, Instagram does still make the unfollowing process simple enough.
It doesn’t matter, whether you use Instagram on a web browser or via the mobile phone app, the process is identical either way.
To unfollow an account on Instagram, please follow these instructions:
- Log on to your Instagram account.
- Use the search bar to search for the account you wish to unfollow, or bring up your followers list via your profile to locate it.
- Once you’re on the profile you wish to unfollow, select the ‘following’ button (on a web browser this will be presented a tick icon and a person icon.)
- On the subsequent pop up that will appear, hit the ‘unfollow’ button.
- You won’t be prompted to confirm your decision so please note that as soon as you click that button, that person will be removed from your feed going forward.
- Refresh the page and check that the ‘following’ button has changed to a ‘follow’ button on that user’s profile.
There are plenty of third party apps that can help you to unfollow lots of accounts quickly, but we recommend doing this on Instagram manually. This is to stop your account getting banned.
Alternatives to unfollowing
When you unfollow an account on Instagram, the user in question won’t be notified that they have lost a follower so the process is fairly discreet.
However, if the person in question is close to you then they may well notice that you aren’t following them in the long run.
If you are conscious that by unfollowing someone on the app that you may be hurting their feelings then there are some alternatives available to you that will still hide their content from your feed.
The best way to do this is to ‘mute’ them.
In order to mute someone on Instagram, please follow these steps:
- Log on to your Instagram account via the mobile phone app.
- Search for the account that you wish to mute either by navigating through your ‘following’ list or by using the main search bar on the home page.
- Once you are on the profile you want to mute, select the ‘following’ button.
- From the drop down menu, select ‘mute’.
- From here, you are able to select whether you want to mute their posts, stories or both.
- Once you’ve decided on the content you wish to mute, select the back button on the top left hand side of the screen.
- The user will not be notified of this and from now on, their posts and/or stories won’t appear on your Instagram feed.
Conclusion
Instagram works much in the same as Twitter in the sense that you can connect with people by ‘following’ their account. And in the same fashion, it can be difficult to see who unfollowed you on Instagram too.
When you follow someone on Instagram, all of that user’s posts will begin to appear on your feed as and when they post new things. You will also have full access to their profile, meaning you’ll be able to scroll through everything they’ve ever posted on to the platform.
To conclude, you are capped at 200 unfollows per day on Instagram. Despite that, though, we would recommend that you never undertake a mass unfollow spree because this kind of activity can flag your account to moderators which could result in deactivation.
Therefore, utilise the mute option on Instagram more often to remove spam-type content from your feed.
