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All I wanted for Xmas was for Instagram to reinstate my account of tricks for a happy, equitable, green world

Jessian Choy, She/Woman #NotGuys #NotAGirl
16 min readDec 28, 2020

Things you do that lets Instagram disable your account and how to get your in real life (IRL) back & how to download (save) all your social media accounts

Updated December 31, 2023

I couldn’t find one article on everything in my image below. So I compiled it all below:

Instagram disabled thousands of accounts without saying why

Hundreds of casualties included me and other journalists like Colm Flynn, Tania Hussain, a GQ magazine researcher, a science writer, a mental health and breast cancer podcaster, a white woman condemning white supremacy, human rights activists, and a diplomat. Trolls also use Instagram’s algorithms to disable LGBTQ accounts within minutes, such as a bookstore that was paying ads, and a couple. Black users were 50% more likely than others to have their Instagram accounts disabled, but more research was prohibited by Instagram management. Instagram even deleted posts for hate speech that said, “I don’t consent to this presidency.”

Instagram has “next to no human oversight,” resulting in “a backlog of disputed decisions on accounts that have been disabled.” Even before the COVID-19 lockdown, content moderator contractors of Facebook (which owns Instagram) reported colluding with in-house auditors to arbitrarily apply rules so they could keep their jobs. Since COVID, Facebook sent home many of its contracted content reviewers and relied on automated tools, leading to mistakes and slower response times. But disabling accounts with no warning or reason violates the Santa Clara Principles on transparency and accountability in content moderation.

Thousands on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit (and this thread) and Instagram also reported Instagram disabled their accounts. Some on Reddit said they paid to run Facebook ads just so they could talk to a rep. (Facebook owns Instagram but might not in the future because they have a monopoly). Some paid $300 for Facebook’s Oculus Virtual Reality Headset just so they could get their account reinstated. Facebook allegedly said to pay $100 a month to escalate their appeal to reinstate their account:

So I shelled out my hard-earned $1 for an ad knowing full well this was highway robbery. But that didn’t work for me or others:

Things you do where Instagram can secretly shadowban or disable your account, not say why

Despite what they say to the media, Instagram’s Help says “accounts may be disabled without warning”:

On December 8, 2020, I suddenly couldn’t login to my Fun and Draconian account. I was surprised because my posts on Instagram are PG-rated and are what I post on Twitter and Facebook. I never posted election, vaccine or COVID disinformation or street protests or violence. I had 500 real Instagram followers. I joined in 2014. I never paid for fake followers or likes. I rarely comment on other people’s posts.

I just want my Instagram life back, not so I can post selfies or food but so I can share tricks to create a happy, equitable, green world and look at vegan food. Please let me have this one thing during COVID!

I’m an independent journalist that’s codependent on a needy planet. You might know me as that person that mailed her menstrual, leakproof organic underwear to professor Graham Peaslee who found toxic chemicals in it. Then I shared five “brief” steps to get real green products and policies.

I have no idea if Instagram disabled my account because I used words like “menstrual” (Instagram banned menstrual ads) or if it was because my last post said, “I’m trying to seduce you (with my dorky, ergonomic necklace for my used iPhone 4S) to see why celebrate #BuyNothingDay/#BlackFriday with this gripping documentary on electronics poisoning people”:

Like any decent person, I tried to figure out what I could have done wrong. I couldn’t find anything. But I fell down many internet rabbit holes and found these things:

Their press team stopped answering my emails between December 17 and January 11 when I asked how to save users from heartache and save Instagram time processing disabled accounts. I don’t know if they’re not reinstating my account just because I wrote this post even though others were even more salty. Below are questions I emailed Instagram’s press team on innocent things you do that lets them disable your account, and how impossible it is to get it back.

Instagram’s new terms of use in effect as of December 20, 2020:

  1. Are people allowed to repost Instagram posts? Would Instagram disable accounts for reposting say Black Lives Matter’s Breonna Taylor? Is that why mine was disabled?
  2. Your terms say “You can’t do anything to interfere with or impair the intended operation of the Service. This includes misusing any reporting, dispute, or appeals channel, such as by making fraudulent or groundless reports or appeals.” Can Instagram tell if an account was falsely reported or hacked and doesn’t deserve deactivation? In your appeal forms, I reported that I found someone else logged into my Facebook from cities I wasn’t in. And I saw this message on my computer, “The IP address you are using has been flagged as an open proxy. If you believe this to be incorrect, please visit https://help.instagram.com." But when I go to your help site, I don’t see how I can prove that I’m not a bot and I haven’t been commenting or liking thousands of accounts. I’m concerned that I was hacked.
  3. Your terms say, “You can’t use a domain name or URL in your username without our prior written consent,” It’s unclear if it means domain.com/username or username.com and it can be hard to avoid for me and other people. Could this be why Instagram disabled some accounts and users can’t get accounts back? How can people get “prior written consent”?
  4. Do all Instagram apps violate your terms? If so, can you say so in “plain English” in the terms? And can you ask the Apple Store and Google app store to not allow them? Perhaps Instagram disabled accounts for having apps that users assumed were allowed? On December 9, I deleted all third-party Instagram apps, in case they were somehow messing with my account.
  5. Are users allowed to have a link in their bio to LinkTree or LinkIn.Bio? It seems you disabled accounts with those links? If not, can you please say so in “plain English”? In order for people to see that I’m not trying to spread disinformation, I’d like to let people fact check what I say on Instagram by letting them click a link to see my sources in publications I write for.
  6. Can users enter Instagram contests where they ask for follows and to tag a friend? The last thing I did before my account was disabled was to enter a contest.
  7. If a user logs in frequently, mutes accounts or unfollows some accounts, would that trigger deactivation? Any way for Instagram to not do that because some users might need to do that for innocent reasons?
  8. Are there other common reasons Instagram disables accounts that the average user who isn’t a troll should know about?
  9. Can your terms be written in “plain English” for users that aren’t lawyers? For example, if all apps aren’t allowed, can the terms just say it like that?
  10. Can Instagram prioritize disabling accounts with the most egregious violations first before others? It didn’t feel great to have my account disabled when I’m not a troll.

My experience filling your appeal forms nine times on my disabled account:

  1. Can Instagram give people a warning on specifically what they did wrong so they know what not to do? What did I do that got my account disabled? Can you improve the user experience? The first notice I saw from Instagram was on December 8 of something like, “We’ll let you login in 24 hours.” After 24 hours, the login said “Your account has been disabled for violating our terms.” I filled out the “form if your account was disabled for not following Instagram’s Community Guidelines and you believe this was a mistake.” It’d be great if Instagram told me if I didn’t follow Community Guidelines. Since I didn’t know, I also filled out this form that also said it was for violating Community Guidelines. Then I got auto-reply emails from Facebook asking for a mugshot of me holding a piece of paper with two hands with a code. I took all those steps four times. Also, what if a user is disabled and doesn’t have two hands?
  2. If a user violated a copyright or a Community Guideline such as by using hate speech, can Instagram just delete that content and tell the user what was deleted instead of disabling their account?
  3. How do you protect users from getting disabled, such as journalists who might be targeted by trolls?
  4. Can you tell users when a decision is final and it’s no longer useful for them to keep filling Instagram’s appeal form? That way, users can try to move on with their lives. Some seem to have submitted appeals for months without getting their accounts reactivated.
  5. Can you tell users how long it can take to get back to users? Some users seem to think they have to reply to all auto-emails from Facebook asking for a mugshot. If a user gets tired of doing that but still wants their account back, do they have to do another mugshot?
  6. Is this random Instagram appeal form that I found one that you check? If not, can you take it down? None of Instagram’s prompts sent me to that form. But it was the ninth time I filled out your forms. What’s the different between your forms users can fill from their desktop computer versus phone? When people like me fill that form and the phone form, it says, “Your request couldn’t be processed.”
  7. Is there any way to not just reinstate accounts of people who are famous, white, men with friends with your staff, or lucky enough to be forwarded to your staff who reinstated it on Saturday, January 2, 2021? Or do we have to be like this person who interviewed for a developer job just so he could ask you to reinstate his account?
  8. How else can disabled account owners get help if they took all steps prompted by Instagram?

Can Instagram create features so users don’t need apps and web browser extensions?

  1. Can you grant requests from many users to let us post clickable links in captions and comments like how Facebook does? That could prevent disinformation so followers can factcheck by clicking a link. Since Instagram only allows plain text in captions and comments, currently, a follower would have to copy and paste a plain text link into a browser, which is cumbersome. Then they’d have to click a link in the account’s bio, then search again in that link for the exact info mentioned in the Instagram post.
  2. Can you let users watch Instagram Live videos on their desktop? I downloaded the Chrome extension IG Stories for Instagram so I could do that. But in mid-December, I got notifications saying it was downloading malware to my laptop. So I deleted it.
  3. Can you create a way to easily tell if people aren’t following back? For example, if you follow back to be nice, it’s hard to know when people unfollowed you to boost their followers-to-following ratio. In Twitter, you can see who’s following you just by looking at their bio.
  4. Can you warn users before they accidentally use an innocent hashtag like #desk that will trigger Instagram disabling their account? It’s hard for users to check all posts regularly for banned hashtags.

If those unanswered questions don’t make you feel paranoid, keep reading.

Instagram deletes innocent content, lets Neonazis bully, and hides your content and you don’t even know (shadowbanning).

Instagram deleted Salma El-Wardany’s comment when she talked about her feelings about men after she was sexually assaulted. Yet they didn’t disable Neonazis bullying a transgender man posing for a sustainable menstrual product.

Instagram even seems to shadowban discussions on race

Instagram deleted anti-racism educator Monique Melton’s posts with no warning and no way to appeal and they shadowbanned No White Saviors. Also, Gina Martin notices her race stories cap at 1,000 views when normally over 10,000 view them.

Instagram deletes PG-13 content (though users have to be 13+)

They removed Rupi Kaur’s selfie bleeding on her mattress during her period in 2015.

In 2019, Salty reported that Facebook and Instagram’s 22 policies on underwear and swimwear imagery for ads all applied to women models, whom they referred to as “girls.” None were for men models.

Also, in 2019, Bitch magazine reported that Black, queer influencer Ari Fitz said Instagram shadowbanned her when she posted a photo in which you couldn’t even see her nipples. She thinks she was shadowbanned because she couldn’t find herself easily when she typed her account in Instagram’s search. She never showed her butt like Justin Bieber did. She left Instagram because unlike Twitter and Youtube, Instagram never responded to her and her friends when they were shadowbanned.

In 2020, they banned people breastfeeding.

Was I shadowbanned first for not paying ads, and then again for leaving a Business account?

About a year ago, I got an Instagram notification asking if I wanted to switch to a free Business account so I could get analytics. They had me at “free” and “analytics.” Then I noticed people were engaging with my posts a lot less. I’ll never know if Instagram hid my posts because they wanted me to pay for ads. Since I didn’t want to pay for ads, after a few months, I clicked their button to switch back to a Personal account. Then I noticed people engaged even less with my posts. And I just learned that when you switch to a business account, that makes your contact information public.

If you haven’t left Instagram yet, the dealbreaker might be that Instagram can sell your content without asking or paying you

That’s according to Hayleigh Bosher, Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law, Brunel University London in The Conversation.

If you’d like to help me and others, please try two things

I don’t like asking for help. But I tried everything I could do on my own. The only way some people got their accounts back was to make a lot of noise. And in order for me to update this post to help other disabled accounts, please tell me if you tried these two things:

  1. On your phone, ask Instagram to reinstate my account. Go to your Instagram profile and click the three-line button at the top right, Settings, Help Report a Problem, and Something Isn’t Working, and write something like “Instagram disabled @FunAndDraconian on December 8, 2020 and @JessianChoy on March 8, 2022. She filled appeal forms 14 times on her phone and desktop, and replied to auto-emails with mugshots and codes. And filled Instagram’s and Facebook’s data request form twice per account. When people like her fill the phone form, it says, ‘Your request couldn’t be processed.’ Please reinstate this account. At least let her download her account.” Send me a screenshot, if you can.
  2. Like or share my tweet, and posts on Facebook and Instagram about this so Facebook and Instagram will hopefully see it and prevent this from happening to others. I’ll add major updates to those posts.

Why I’m moving to Substack (until I find one that doesn’t allow hate towards women and transgender people)

Unlike other social media platforms, only you know exactly how many Substack subscribers you have or how much money you make from subscribers. So there’s less of a popularity contest and rat race to the bottom. And the best thing is I don’t have to see people pretending to live their best life. I’d rather know how my friends are actually doing and if they need my help.

Substack features some funny and serious journalists trying to save the world. You can even create podcasts with a click. Currently, none of the Top Paid climate writers are Asian in Substack. But an Asian can American dream, right? You can get my free, possibly fun, monthly mass emails on Substack. Maybe I’m psychic because I started Substack a day before Instagram disabled my account. Bonus: Substack is ad-free with no algorithms.

Let me expose Facebook’s and Instagram’s unfair practices

I specialize in keeping secrets at my secure, encrypted email. It’s my first name @ProtonMail.com. Protect yourself when you contact me. For a faster reply, include your Signal phone number and dates and times in PST for me to call you.

Maybe I should thank Instagram for disabling my account?

Social media use linked to increased risk of depression

When social media like Facebook launched, I saw my friends literally turn their back on me to be online while they visited me from out of town. Like many addictions, social media can make you not feel better about yourself. Several studies have linked heavy social media use to an increased risk of depression.

Most of my closest friends aren’t on social media. We talk for hours on our landlines instead. When you talk to someone on the phone or in-person, it’s healing for you because you get positive mood boosts from hormones. That doesn’t happen when you’re conversing on social media.

Someday I might not care that my Instagram is gone. I just realized my Myspace page is gone and I apparently didn’t miss that since 2008. I was never really on it though. Back then, I avoided all social media like the plague. I never even joined Friendster. But for now, I’d like my Instagram back.

Using the web and having websites store your content contributes to climate change

So maybe one less account is worth it. I don’t post much. But when I do, I at least don’t want someone to take it down without telling me why or giving me a chance to change.

For updates, connect with me before they delete our accounts

Or see you IRL!

But wait, there’s more! Keep reading for:

  • How to save your data from emails and social media while you can
  • What to do if Instagram disables your account
  • See your rights in plain English on social media, search engines and other websites
  • How since I wrote this post, Instagram has reinstated many people’s accounts within days but hasn’t reinstated accounts like mine that were disabled for over a month

Save your data from emails and social media while you can

How to download your data:

If you don’t want to lose your images in Pinterest, retweet this so Pinterest might create a way to download your data. Also, somebody please tell me when these music platforms will let people download likes in Pandora, Soundcloud and Spotify.

Why I use Diigo to save almost everything (bookmarks, highlights of webpages (even PDFs))

Even if Instagram eventually lets me download data from my disabled account, I don’t know if that will include my Saved bookmarks. So I’m using Diigo instead to save bookmarks from now on. I’ve used them for years and only experienced one issue. They replied within a day and fixed it. You can export your data in various formats.

What to do after you filled Instagram’s appeal forms

See your rights in plain English on social media, search engines, other websites

Terms of Service; Didn’t Read is a user rights group that includes lawyers that tell you in non-legalese how many rights you’re giving away by using certain social media, search engines and other websites. They label those websites from very good (Class A) to very bad (Class E). They labeled Facebook and Instagram as Class E.

Since I wrote this post, Instagram reinstated accounts within days but hasn’t for accounts like mine that were disabled for over a month

It seems unfair that Instagram now sometimes lets people download their accounts as soon as Instagram disables them:

And I wish Instagram did this for people like me before they disabled our accounts:

Social Media
Technology
Racism
Sexism
Instagram

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Jessian Choy, She/Woman #NotGuys #NotAGirl

Written by Jessian Choy, She/Woman #NotGuys #NotAGirl

67 Followers

That person who mailed menstrual underwear to prof who found toxic PFAS. Journalist @realMsGreen. Be happy/equitable/green/vegan via hypnosis, reiki, sound w/me

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