"We’ve permanently deleted your account. No appeal is possible, no recovery— you’re just gone. Forever. And don’t even try to create a new account; we’ll find you, and we’ll delete that one too. Consider this your official Instagram exit, and do not return".
That’s what Instagram said to me. Not exactly how they said it, but it sounded like that. Just a stone-cold, heartless, wrong final decision by a moderation bot.
“What did I do? I don’t even post… did I violate community rules with the reels I watch?”.
That was the first thing I asked myself.
Still confused, I said, “Well, it’s their loss”, trying to sound like a tough guy. But deep down, I knew whose loss it was 😕
Because I was banned by a bot. A mindless piece of code controlled by algorithms. So… the humans working at Instagram don’t even know I got banned. It’ll only show up in their cumulative monthly statistics like “we deleted 102,939,391 bad accounts this month”, and my account would be the “1” at the back 🤣
So, let’s have dark thoughts for a minute… Imagine instagram was real life, and someone something a bot has the ability to just banish you into a pure abyss without a second thought, and without consequences. Or the bot just decides to be adventurous one day and gets high on the wrong algorithm, “Oops, humanity deleted”, our existence up there in the trash like an unwanted email. Fun times. At least you can restore emails from the trash.
But back to reality. My dear account is gone, and there’s nothing to be done - according to them.
I tell myself, “It’s just Instagram”, which it is, no stress. But I’ve got eight years worth of archives, a neatly curated algorithm, and dozens of saved posts, now dust in the wind. It’s like the weird junk drawer in the house—you don’t need it to survive, but it’s where all the ‘just in case’ stuff lives.
Again, let’s have wicked thoughts for a minute… Imagine if I knew Mark Zuckerberg. Like, imagine he’s my boy. I’d storm over to his mansion in Palo Alto. No security stopping me ‘cos they know me. I then tear him a dirty slap. Then, watch as he storms into the Meta HQ angrily to transfer the aggression, slapping every employee in sight.
Of course, the chaos is epic… which escalates to lawsuits and a $13.72 million settlement, but don’t worry—I’d sort it out for him.
“Don’t do that again, Mark. Now give me your Instagram account instead”, I would say as I tapped him on the head like the good boy he is.
Again… back to reality.
This is an obituary piece for my account. It had a good run. I wonder who will use the username next or if they’ll ever allow someone else to use it. I wonder if the person will know there was an old user. I wonder if the next user will one day stumble upon this content. Hmmmm… I wonder if someone used the username before me and got the same fate. Maybe the previous owner also wrote an obituary piece somewhere. I wonder if the username is haunted, and everyone who gets it will eventually get banned. That makes sense.
Actually, it makes no sense. But just like my dad always says…. "The cattle that goes up the…” I can’t even remember what he says, but it’s something that would have been a good fit for that context.
Let me sign out with the very last story post I made on the account. It was that of a dude singing passionately with an Indian accent. It was even an emotional song. Perfectly fitting. I wonder if that’s why they banned me.
Update 1: I got the account back 😀
Update 2: They banned it again 😀
Update 3: I got the account back again 😀
Update 4: They banned it again 😀