Instagram disabled my 250k account with no warning

Instagram disabled my 250k account with no warning-and why this is bad news for everyone.

The morning of the 17th of March was just like any other-get up, get dressed, check my social media to see if I had any new messages that needed tending to, and check how much my follower account had increased overnight.

On average, once my account gained traction, I was seeing a fully organic follower increase on my @gabrielleleigha Instagram account of between 1–2k per day. This wasn’t fueled by advertising or any other means but good engagement, good content and organic growth.

I was happy with this, had put a lot of work into my account to get to that point within a year, so I kept a careful eye on this growth, and my account in general.

Now, following the Instagram blackout on the 15th of March, my account had had a few troubles, which I thought we just due to the system returning to normal, and bugs that were probably still present after the blackout, so I didn’t think much of it past it being difficult to use the app. My account kept flicking between pages that I had no control over, randomly freezing and then timing out, displaying blank grey circles rather than the colourful profile pictures that had previously been in their place, or the expansive sprawl of new posts from the accounts I followed.

This continued throughout the 16th March, and even though it was frustrating, I didn’t think too much of it. That was, until the morning of the 17th.

On the 17th, I lost full control of the account. The screen flipped rapidly between pages, into and out of profiles, freezing randomly and producing walls of text that hadn’t been there before. Then the app closed down and kicked me out. When I tried to log back in I was persistently greeted with an error message. I figured this was still some weird thing from the blackout, so didn’t panic over the issue, and got about my day.

Except it went on into the evening. Then the next morning. And the next. Until a whole week had gone by and I still couldn’t access my account.

I tried to no avail to contact Instagram, but with customer service that leaves a lot to be desired in terms of reaching an actual human being, it was nearly impossible to get anything more than an automated report that your email had been submitted and you’d hear back soon.

Except that just wasn’t the case. I didn’t hear back at all.

Another few days passed, and I decided to try the app again, but this time the message had changed from an error message when trying to log in, to a message that my account had been disabled. Disabled!

I knew I hadn’t breached any guidelines, so I duly reported the issue to instagram, filling in their deactivation form, and waited for a reply which would tell me I could access my account again.

I’m sure by now you know where this is going. That didn’t happen. What I received back was an automated message to send them my name, a unique code and my username on a piece of paper held in front of my face and to ensure my hand which held the paper was also visible. I dutifully fulfilled all requests, and sent the jpeg back to the email address the request had come from.

What did I receive back from Instagram? A message to say that my account had been deactivated for violating their guidelines. I knew this not to be true, so I emailed back to the address the decline had come from, and waited to hear back. A reply wasn’t forthcoming.

So I tried again. And again. And again. And probably another 60 or 70 times. Maybe more. I’d lost track by this point.

I ran my account to ensure it was within guidelines, and I was confident that the issue was either through error as a result of issues after the blackout, or from another, more malicious source.

During my time on Instagram, I had followed many accounts. I’d seen probably half of those accounts deactivated at some point, only to return shortly after. Deactivation wasn’t an uncommon, but a common theme that ran through the deactivations I’d seen weren’t that they had occured from innocent computer errors but from malicious abuse of the reporting system.

On Instagram you can report an account for many different reasons-an account is spam, promoting hate speech, is abuse, and that’s just a few of the reasons from the menu that greets you. These reports however are open to mass abuse, so someone can choose to report an account that operates fully within the guidelines, and the account will be automatically deactivated by the bots within the app. It is then up to the account holder to try and restore their account through the complex appeal system which is run at the front end by automated messaging.

The problem with allowing self-governing like this is that it is open to mass abuse. Say a competitor doesn’t like that your account is growing faster than theirs, what do they do? They simply report your account and it’s taken down. You refused to answer an abusive DM from a follower and they felt entitled to a response? Hit that report button and you’ve shown that person what will happen if they ignore you.

If you google ‘instagram disabled my account’ it will turn up thousands of results. There are thousands of videos on YouTube regarding false reports that have led to innocent accounts being deactivated.

And yet, it’s near impossible to get hold of a person to reinstore your account.

The system is flawed and makes it very easy for someone to take down an account for false reasons, just because they can.

An easy way to stop the problem being so prolific is by having each reported account reviewed by a team of humans before it is removed. If the account is removed it should then be possible for the account owner to appeal and receive a response from a human being.

If someone is found to have abused the report function then blocking them from seeing the account of the person they falsely reported would be a start, and possible account restrictions placed upon them for time wasting.

As of today, four weeks after the issue occured, I am still attempting to get hold of an actual human at Instagram to reactivate my account. I worked very hard to build this account, and I will keep going. It shouldn’t be this easy to deactivate an account though, and it means that if someone takes a dislike to you, for whatever reason, they can wipe you off the map in one easy click of a button. Or the system is bugged and requires attention. I don’t know which applies to my account, but I will update this article as I know more.

The link below is to a petition to Instagram’s CEO to change the way the deactivation system works, started by Dani Amsalem after his account was incorrectly deactivated.

I’ve also included a link to an article by Dani Diamond in relation to his own experience with regards to abuse of the report system and what happened with his account.

Below is a link to my YouTube channel, with videos detailing the situation with my 250k Instagram account and the lack of support from Instagram in relation to appealing the deactivation.

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