Freshly opened, without followers and with a minimum of posts.
This is what profiles on the social network Instagram look like on average, as they coordinated and followed critical media outlets and non-governmental organizations in Serbia in a short period of time, after which their accounts on this platform were temporarily suspended.
Analysis by Radio Free Europe (RFE) shows that these are fake followers, and journalist associations and civil society organizations suspect that this is a planned action, with the intention of limiting the reach of media that are not under government control.
The Instagram pages of more than twenty media outlets, organizations, and individuals in Serbia were suspended or shut down on January 18, after a rapid increase in the number of their followers in a short period of time.
The company Meta, which owns Instagram and the Facebook platform, interprets this as suspicious activity, which results in the suspension or permanent termination of the account.
"This is an unprecedented case because a large number of accounts belonging to different actors were simultaneously affected, from media and photojournalists to civil society organizations and activists," Bojan Perkov from the Share Foundation, which deals with digital security, told RFE/RL.
He points out that it is problematic that Meta moderates content mechanically, so it often reacts to accounts that do not violate the rules, which is what happened in this case.
Most of the profiles that were shut down or suspended on January 18 were reactivated a day later.
RFE/RL tried to find out from the Prosecutor's Office for High-Tech Crime whether this institution is investigating the termination of media and civil society organizations' accounts on social networks, but no response was received by the time of writing.
Meta has not responded to why the profiles were suspended or shut down.
Months of bot profile attacks
Immediately before the synchronized account shutdown on Instagram, some media outlets publicly warned about bot attacks, manifested through an extreme increase in the number of followers in a short period of time.
Among them is the portal "Nova S", which on January 10 reported an unusual increase in the number of followers on their Instagram account.
According to data from the social media analytics platform Social Blade, in just one day their profile gained over 40 new followers, without any viral posts or increased activity.
Just a day later, the account was followed by 25 thousand Instagram users.
The weekly "Radar" also announced on January 13 that the number of followers on its account had increased by about eight percent in less than two hours. At the same time, the accounts of the Nova S and N1 television stations, as well as the youth portal Zoomer, recorded a sharp increase in the number of followers.
This portal identified several accounts that simultaneously followed multiple media profiles in Serbia.
According to RFE/RL's analysis, these profiles show a clear structure of fake (bot) accounts, i.e. they do not have a single follower, were opened recently, and all posts were made on the first day, after which there was no activity.
A large number of new followers are also recorded by the profiles of student organizations that launched blockades of faculties at the end of 2024, and then mass anti-government protests in Serbia due to the death of 16 people in the collapse of the canopy of the Novi Sad Railway Station.
Thus, in the last few months, the Instagram profile "Students in Blockade" has almost tripled the number of followers, from 400 thousand to a million.
In November 2025, several student profiles were temporarily disabled as a result.
Students have been using social media as their main channels of communication since the beginning of the protests.
Non-transparent rules
Although most media Instagram accounts saw a sharp increase in the number of followers, this is not the case with all accounts that were shut down or suspended.
Data from the analytics platform Social Blade shows that in the case of the CRTA organization's profile, there was no unusual activity or increase in the number of followers.
This was confirmed to RFE/RL by Jovana Đurbabić from this non-governmental organization that monitors elections, researches democracy and the rule of law.
"We did not see a sudden increase in the number of followers, which happened to some other accounts in previous weeks, nor did we receive notifications that there was a suspicion that the profile was violating the community rules in any way. In the morning, a colleague who works on social media tried to access the page and there was no account," says Đurbabić.
According to her, their profile was deactivated without explanation on January 18th, and restored a day later, also without explanation from Meta.
"It's quite strange and symptomatic that it happened on the same day to different accounts. Even if our profile was shut down automatically, there must be some initial step for Meta to ban some accounts," says Đurbabić, adding that CRTA wrote to Meta's customer support service, but that they have not received any response so far.
Bojan Perkov from the Share Foundation believes that Meta applies the rules in a non-transparent manner, which is why it is sometimes unclear how a certain decision regarding content was made and what its consequences may be.
"This is particularly problematic in the context of orders from Serbia, which is not an EU member state, and regulations such as the Digital Services Act, which require online platforms to harmonize user content management processes in terms of transparency and appeals of moderator decisions, do not apply," says Perkov.
Reactions from journalist associations
Several journalist associations condemned the shutdown of the pages of "Radar", the "Nova" portal, and other media outlets and asked the authorities to urgently find out who is behind these "bot attacks".
The Association for Electronic Media (ANEM) assessed that this was a "coordinated action aimed at shutting down the profiles of independent and professional media."
As the association adds, "particular concern" is raised by the actions of the Meta company, given that all profiles had a status indicating that they did not violate the platform's rules.
"Also, editorial teams and administrators did not receive any prior warning before shutting down profiles, although, according to the platform's rules, this should be standard practice, with a statement of the specific rules that were allegedly violated and a deadline for correcting irregularities," ANEM states.
The Independent Journalists' Association of Vojvodina stated in a statement that such events are not an isolated technological incident, but a coordinated attempt at "digital sabotage targeting independent media that critically report on the state of society and events of public interest."
RFE/RL requested a comment from the European Commission regarding this case, but no response was received by the time this article was published.
In 2025, Serbia had the highest number of attacks on journalists compared to other Western Balkan countries.
This is data from the Council of Europe Platform for the Promotion of the Protection of Journalism and the Safety of Journalists.
According to this data, last year, 59 cases of threats to the safety of journalists were recorded in the Western Balkan countries, of which 33 were from Serbia.
According to a report by the international organization Freedom House from February 2025, Serbia was on the list of countries with the greatest decline in freedoms in the last ten years.
One of the reasons cited is the tightening of media control and attacks on journalists.
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