I created an account that's about me learning to draw. I did this pattern: uploaded a pic from my phone, then write the description at my laptop. For each pic, I discuss what I learned and the overall journey. Nothing crazy. Nothing controversial. Nothing illegal in the remotest sense. It was taking me 10-15 minutes per pic, so I wasn't slamming the server. No VPN. My family asked me to set this up so that they can see my art instead of me texting pics. I was just doing this on my day off because I don't have time to mess with it during the week....
It was flagged once, and I verified my contact info. It was flagged again an hour or so later, so they had me upload a face pic (which I did from their app). Then, an hour later, they say that it doesn't follow their community standards and that my account is permanently disabled.
It all happened today. Only 15-20 pics total (I don't know exactly how many, so it's probably actually less).
At this point, I can just vibe code a website for my artwork, but I would assume that what I am doing is exactly the thing that Instagram was intended for!
al_borland•51m ago
coreyp_1•1m ago
I disagree, though, that it's spam behavior. It's "well, it's time to set up my account" behavior.
I mean, it's not like they could provide for a human to review after they asked for me to take a selfie. A selfie that shows the same person as the one that has used the facebook account with the same email address and face for over a decade... No, that's definitely asking too much. Or perhaps informing the user of concerning behavior, because all that they did was point to "community standards", which said nothing about what I was doing.
Apologies... my snark is not directed at you. It's just the exasperation towards a system that makes actual human participation impossible, while assuring that bots are the only ones who can get something done and yet stay under the radar.