Ask HN: Instagram blocked my new account what can I do?

5 points by coreyp_1 3 hours ago | 9 comments

I'm baffled by this.

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!

brudgers 1 hour ago |

Why not create a new profile on your existing account?

That’s the more standard practice with Instagram and Facebook.

Separate accounts almost certainly correlates with problematic behavior and your existing account is a basis for trust. In part because your stakes are higher.

While in this case, you didn’t lose hardly nothing.

coreyp_1 1 hour ago | |

What do you mean by my "existing account"? I didn't have an instagram account before today.

But, as a general rule, I keep all of my accounts separate. There's too many horror stories of a person getting locked out of one account, and then they can't do anything else.

Separate accounts are the only safe option.

I think my takeaway on this is just that Instagram isn't worth the hassle. I did lose the write-ups that I did for my pictures, though (which is why my upload pace was so slow).

brudgers 1 hour ago | | |

Instagram is part of Meta.

Typically, Instagram accounts are linked with a Facebook presence.

That’s the trust model.

Anyway, whether the Instagram juice is worth the squeeze, depends on why you want the juice and how much you want it.

al_borland 2 hours ago |

My guess is that a new account making 20 posts in a single day is a red flag for spam behavior. It would probably be best to post at a more natural rate.

coreyp_1 1 hour ago | |

Well, I guess I'm forever lost as a user, since I'm banned for doing the very thing that they encourage... sharing my original content.

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.

fuzzfactor 1 hour ago | | |

>what I am doing is exactly the thing that Instagram was intended for!

Wasn't that before Facebook took over the company?

>what can I do?

Stay as far away from Meta as possible to avoid further enshittification?

evil-olive 2 hours ago |

> It all happened today. Only 15-20 pics total

think about the distribution for "number of pictures a new Instagram user posts on their first day"

then think of how far of an outlier your behavior was.

coreyp_1 1 hour ago | |

I wouldn't know. I only know what it's like to (1) set up an account of any type, which usually requires quite a bit of initial activity, followed later by (2) decreased ongoing maintenance.

But, whatever. They set up an automated system that weeded out a human while letting bots run rampant.

Maybe we need a page about "falsehoods programmers believe about human behavior", but they wouldn't read it. :/