A glitch Thursday night prompted rumors that Instagram was randomly deleting accounts. However, the company says although some people lost access to their accounts for a short time, there was no mass purge.
Nevertheless, during the height of the rumors Thursday night, the hashtag #Dontdeletemyaccount made the rounds on Instagram (where more than 500,000 photos used the tag) and on Twitter. As many noted, using such a hashtag would be unlikely to change anyone's mind.
OMG youth of the world relax @instagram isn't suddenly going to delete your account for not posting #dontdeletemyaccount— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) May 24, 2013
Users speculated that the Facebook-owned Instagram was freeing up space on its servers or punishing those who violated its Terms of Service agreement. Adding fuel to the rumors, someone started an account called DontdeletemyIG that now has 68,000 followers.
However, the rumors appear to be unfounded. On Friday, Instagram offered the following statement on the incident: A small percentage of users could not access their accounts for a few hours as a result of a temporary glitch. We have restored access for these users, and no pictures or data were lost.
The company also apologized on Friday afternoon:
Sorry for the hiccup! Thanks for your reports regarding yesterday's technical issues. We're back on track. help.instagram.com/165012027001436— Instagram (@instagram) May 24, 2013