I'm scared that I've ruined my Instagram account forever.. Please help..

Okay. So I've had an Instagram account since about 2011, and it was just a personal one but in 2012 I started using it for my business and I naturally gained about 16k followers. Now I've changed my business a bit and therefore wanted to attract a new crowd so I started to do the follow for follow method. I now have went from 16k to 22 in 4 weeks. by manually following people.

i never used this follow method before. So apart from paying once or twice for like 3k followers here and there I've never used this account to spam. So From following people I reached like maybe 6900 accounts before I realised I couldn't follow any more.

then I unfollow, and follow more. I did get a few temporary bans, but none were over 24hrs. I prob got like 5 temp bans.

anyway.. So I kept follow/unfollow and I noticed my following limit kept decreasing, like it went from 6900 down to less and less and less every time.. And now I cannot follow more than 1100 accounts..

its been like this for 3 days (since they updated Instagram or maybe it's a coincidence) BUT I am so worried that I'll never be able to follow more people.. and I stopped requesting to follow private accounts so it cannot be those accounts taking up space.

I will ill stop spamming and return to being a normal user if I have to but I'm too scared to touch any follow or unfollow buttons incase I make my limit lower than 1k, I imagine if I keep doing what I'm doing soon I won't be able to follow more than like 10 accounts lol.

why is it doing this?
has this happened to anyone else?
does it go back to normal? Ever?

Maybe those are the private accounts that you previously followed and haven't approved your request yet before you realized that they're taking up space and stopped following them.

No.. I never followed many to begin with. I'm POSITIVE it's not them because my limit kept going down and down when I stopped with them all together

You have been following private profiles!! They have not accepted your follow request, hence your following limit has decreased!!

No this was a problem to begin with before I realised what was happening so I went through the people that I used their followers to follow and un-requested all the requests so I know it's not them. I still can't follow more plus I know I didn't follow like 5000 private accounts lol. It's NOT them. So what else is the reason :/

let the account rest for about 7 days and start slow after it

M00sh said:

No this was a problem to begin with before I realised what was happening so I went through the people that I used their followers to follow and un-requested all the requests so I know it's not them. I still can't follow more plus I know I didn't follow like 5000 private accounts lol. It's NOT them. So what else is the reason :/

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that follow/unrequest is counted as 2 actions since you're following (1) and then immediately unfollowing (2). So maybe you end up having too many actions and you get temporarily blocked from following.

There were already many users, including myself, complaining about this and I guess it's because of those private users. First, they take up space and then if you follow them and then unrequest you're making too many request at a time.

I also noticed that myself with my following limit getting down each time I started to unfollow.

Let the account rest, don't follow private users anymore and check if it helped.

I don't know yet if my account is fine since I did not reach 7,5k followings but I'm also interested in seeing if this "limit" got away.

don't follow/unfollow on the same day, give it 1-2 days to rest.
How is your engagement for such an old account?

My engagement is good but it isn't as good as it used to be. I probably get 600-1000 likes. Anyway.. I've not done anything for two days but I still can't follow new people unless I unfollow some and therefore decrease my limit again

M00sh said:

My engagement is good but it isn't as good as it used to be. I probably get 600-1000 likes. Anyway.. I've not done anything for two days but I still can't follow new people unless I unfollow some and therefore decrease my limit again

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let the account rest for a week, 1-2 days nowadays with all those limits doesn't seem enough anymore.