Anyone working on Instagram should read this. I’d created an Instagram account to try it out. I posted a few posts (like infographics, I wasn’t going to give real photos to Facebook) and didn’t continue later. After some months I found I couldn’t login and that my account was disabled for “violating terms”. There was nothing in that account that violated any terms — no spam, no hate speech, no nudity, no spamming others for likes or followers. The only thing that stood out was that I mostly used a web browser to post and sometimes shared a photo to the app instead of giving the app access to all my photos. The account continued to work for quite sometime after I stopped posting and interacting.
I tried to appeal, but it wanted a real photo of me holding some handwritten information. No thanks, I don’t really need an abusive and flakey platform to have my real photo. I abandoned Instagram then. It’s one of the most needlessly aggressive platforms that deactivates accounts for no good reason and bullies people into giving their photo and/or phone number. I hope Instagram dies quickly because of this stupid aggressiveness.
More people should start using decentralized platforms where one may have a better chance of expressing oneself (I’m talking about regular, non-spam speech). All these centralized platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are big time bullies.