James Charles blames Instagram algorithm for a 3 million drop in likes

Twenty-one year old beauty guru James Charles has recently gone off on a rant against Instagram’s new algorithm. He claims that he has seen a dramatic drop in likes on his photos which can harm future business opportunities and visibility. Charles also claims his Instagram photos receive an average of four million likes, compared to today, where he receives "a mere" one million per photo.

(Photo: James Charles)

“I’m frustrated for selfish reasons, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t, it’s embarrassing to see your likes drop seventy-five percent.” Charles stated the way Instagram promotes accounts and photos not only harms his business, but also harms small businesses and creators as well.

“When I go from four million likes to one million likes per photo, that affects my business and my ability to work with brands.” He continues, “Because brands are gonna think, is he buying his engagement? Is he buying his likes?” Instagram’s algorithm is known to constantly change, and the goal of the app creators is to equally distribute visibility to pages catered to the account’s interest. 

James Charles GOES OFF blaming Instagram for what he said is algorithm change that caused his likes to drop from 4M to 1M per post. James says “It’s embarrassing to have your likes drop 75%.”

Senior Clout Chaser Correspondent Lil Shout Out says “👀”

What are your thoughts? pic.twitter.com/k5Ekj3ydde

— Def Noodles (@defnoodles) October 5, 2020

Charles went on to share that the feeling is mutual among the content creator community and that no one is in favour of Instagram’s current algorithm. At the beginning of the year, Instagram’s Creators page posted an FAQ Story explaining why certain accounts impact Feed ranking differently. “We do not favor posts from businesses or verified accounts in Feed.” the Story says, “If you interact with that content more, of course it is most likely to appear at the top of your Feed.” by this logic, Charles’ one million likes are solely targeted to interactive followers or visitors, pushing him out of feeds that don’t pertain to his kind of content.

(Photo: Instagram)

Of course, Charles has a long history of dealing with drama and airing out his dirty laundry. The comments following his video posted by internet news commentator Dennis Feitosa. One user @shiraishiiyuria referred back to his previous drama, sharing no sympathy for his situation. “I doubt it's an algorithm change causing that in all honesty. People are just over him after all of the fake apologies.”

I doubt it's an algorithm change causing that in all honesty. People are just over him after all of the fake apologies

— winston grip pussy (@shiraishiiyuria) October 5, 2020

Additionally, Charles showed his Twitter followers proof of his engagement numbers within the past month. The first two photos detailed a high amount of outreach and profile visits, while the ones from this week show a significant drop in numbers. Commentators on this post share his frustrations, as others have pointed out that their small business is suffering from this algorithm change as well.

Others seem to continue bringing up his past, including his recent drama with H3H3 Production’s Ethan Klein over stolen merchandise design. Charles was accused of copying Klein’s sweater design for his clothing brand Teddy Fresh, to which Charles responded through a series of tweets on social media.

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Charles reached out to the Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, to fix the app’s algorithm. At the moment, the app developers have not responded to complaints.