The Brief: Instagram has banned dozens of popular meme-accounts with millions of combined followers in what many are calling "the great meme purge of July 2019."

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DEEP DIVE

Instagram has permanently suspended some of its top meme pages en masse for violating the platform’s terms of service. The total number of followers for these 50+ accounts was over 30 million at the time they were banned.

Some of the most popular accounts that were banned include @finestinventions (13 m followers) @uniquevines (8.4 m), @medicalthing (2.7 m), @laugh.s (3 m), @finest.inventions (12.1 m), @meccha.memes (2.4 m), and @succcccccccccccc (3.7 m).

Taylor Lorenz, a staff writer at The Atlantic compiled this list of many of the meme accounts deleted on June 26.

According to a report by Insider, many of these accounts provided lucrative sources of income for their creators. Some accounts reportedly made hundreds of dollars per day and thousands per month.

Alleged violations include the selling and purchasing of usernames as well as attempts to fraudulently obtain usernames. According to a statement made by Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, violations included “attempted abuse of our internal processes.”

Reactions to this massive takedown have been mixed as creators and lament the loss of their accounts and others note that many of these accounts profited from reposting other people’s original content without permission.

Memes About The Purge

Meme-makers and fans are expressing their disappointment in the best way they know how: through memes and by pressing F to pay their respects.

Some memes like this Thanos reference point out that many of the removed accounts were infamous for their stolen content.