“Going private” is a known growth hack among meme pages. When a follower sends someone a post from that account, the receiver must request to follow the page to see it.

In 2018, many of Instagram’s top meme pages locked down their accounts to gain followers in this way. Meme pages often flip between private and public. Some use auto-accept programs to manage their flow of followers.

Large meme pages also set their accounts to private to avoid scrutiny, denying follow requests from journalists or from people they suspect may report the account for violating terms of service. After posting a Bloomberg ad on Wednesday, Funny Hood Vidz flipped its account from public to private, locking out journalists or others who sought to view the ad. (The account is now public again.)

The practice has become so widespread that it has become a pain point with users.

After Josh Constine, a reporter for TechCrunch, spurred a debate about the practice on Twitter on Tuesday, Adam Mosseri, the chief executive of Instagram, replied that “the current state is definitely not great, so we’re looking into a few ideas.”

“It’s not like we just noticed that large meme accounts often go private,” Mr. Mosseri wrote in another tweet. “You’ll probably think this is crazy, it just hasn’t bubbled up as the next most important thing to do, we’ve been more focused on Stories, Direct, creative tools, bullying, elections integrity, etc.”