If a checker that worked fine in March suddenly shows you an empty list, or half the categories it used to fill, the most likely explanation is not your account and not your file. Around May 2026, Meta began rolling out a new internal format for parts of the Instagram data export. Older exports still arrive in the old one. Both are now in circulation, and a tool written for only one of them breaks on the other — usually without saying so.
This page is about the symptoms and what to do about them. If you are looking for where your follower lists live in the archive, that's where followers and following live in the export.
What actually changed?
Meta changed the way parts of the export are written internally. If you unzip an archive and read it yourself, you would struggle to notice: same folders, same filenames, same accounts, same dates. Nothing was removed and nothing was renamed.
Software notices immediately. A tool built against the older layout and never revisited does not recognise the newer one — it assumes the file still looks the way it looked when its developer last checked.
Two things make this messier than an ordinary version bump.
The rollout is partial. It did not arrive everywhere at once. Followers and following were among the last things to move, which is why so many tools looked fine for months: the headline numbers kept working while the smaller categories — blocked accounts, close friends, follow requests, recently unfollowed, favorites — quietly stopped.
One archive can contain both. This is the part that catches developers out. A single ZIP that Meta generated for you this week can hold some parts in the new format and some in the old one. There is no single answer to "which format is this export", not even for one download.
Meta announced none of this. No changelog, no notice in the app, no email. The first sign for most people is a tool going quiet.
What does the breakage look like?
Almost never an error message. That is the frustrating part — you get plausible-looking wrong answers rather than a red banner telling you something failed.
- Zero results. You import a perfectly good export and the tool reports no followers, no following, or an empty Not Following Back list.
- Some categories filled, others empty. Followers and following look right, but blocked accounts, close friends, pending requests or recently unfollowed all come back with nothing — even though you know those lists aren't empty.
- Display names where usernames should be. You get people's profile names instead of their handles. It looks friendlier, and it is a real problem: profile names change whenever their owner feels like it, so the next comparison reads a rename as somebody leaving.
- Dates in January 1970. Every follow appears to have happened on the first day of 1970, or some other obviously impossible date.
- Numbers that swing wildly between imports. Two exports a fortnight apart producing hundreds of unfollowers, or hundreds of new followers, with no plausible real-world cause.
None of these announce themselves as a format problem. They present as "the app is broken", or worse, as a believable answer you then act on.
Why do old ZIPs make it worse?
Because you are supposed to keep them. An unfollower comparison needs an older snapshot and a newer one, so anyone doing this properly has a folder of past exports going back months.
That means a tool cannot assume a file imported today was generated today. Someone can import a ZIP from last autumn on the same afternoon as one from this morning, and the two can be in different formats. Handling only the new format is not enough; handling only the old one stopped being enough in May.
It also explains the most confusing version of this problem: a tool that works on your old archive and fails on your new one, which makes it look as though the new download is corrupt. It isn't.
How can I tell whether my tool handles both?
Request a fresh export and import it. In Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Export your information (older builds say Download your information), tick only Followers and following, set the date range to All time, choose JSON, and wait the few minutes it takes.
Then look past the headline number. If the categories beyond followers and following come up empty, the tool does not handle the new format. That is the cleanest test available from the outside, because those categories moved first. A tool that only ever shows you follower counts can hide the problem for a while; one that shows you blocked accounts or close friends cannot.
Second test, if you have two archives: import an old one and a new one and see whether the comparison is sane. A tool that reads only one format reports an implausible pile of unfollowers, because everyone it failed to read looks like they vanished.
Is my export broken?
No. If Meta generated the archive and the download completed, the file is fine. There is nothing to fix on your end and no setting that puts the format back — that part is Meta's business, not yours.
The only genuine file-level problems worth ruling out are the ordinary ones: a download that stopped partway through, a date range narrower than "All time", or an HTML export where you wanted JSON. Those are covered in how to see who unfollowed you without a password.
What we do about it
Both of our tools read both formats, and they work it out per file rather than per archive — so a ZIP that mixes them, or an old export imported next to a new one, is handled like anything else. When Meta shifts something again, that is our problem to fix, not yours to diagnose.
Check your export against a tool that handles both
Right now, in your browser. Drop your ZIP into the free Instagram unfollow checker and see who doesn't follow you back. Old format, new format or a mix of the two — it reads them all. The file never leaves your device: no login, no password, no upload.
Over time, on your phone. A single export answers today's question only. UnfollowPeek keeps your snapshots on your iPhone and compares them for you — unfollowers, new followers and broken mutuals — even when one archive is a year older than the other. Free on iOS.