Social media star Essena O’Neill deletes Instagram account

Teenager, who quit platform after revealing how much she was being paid to promote products, has started her own website

A teenager who dramatically altered her popular Instagram profile to reveal how she was paid for seemingly perfect images has deleted her account, encouraging followers to visit and donate to her new website instead.

Essena O'Neill, 18, who had 612,000 followers, had rewritten the captions on many of the images, explaining she was being paid to promote clothes and drinks, and had taken some of the selfies more than 100 times to get the right stomach-sucked-in shot. O'Neill said the pictures "served no real purpose other than self-promotion".