(NSR) What to do when your Instagram account goes down.
To bitch, or not to bitch: that is the question.
Please forgive this quick break from my ongoing series ‘Non-Fungible by Nature, Part 3’ which will be sent out this coming weekend…Part 2 if you missed it…
Warning! Let’s start this out with an NSR!
(For the noobs ‘NSR’ means “Not Sneaker Related”)
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move on.
I’ve been getting a lot of messages the past few months from people about what they should do when their Instagram account goes down and I figured I’d just put up a post that I can point to whenever the next person asks me. I am, by no means, an expert in the matter nor do I have much faith that this even works, but I figured I’d put it out there. I know I’ve been vocal about my issues in the past so it seems people think I have some magic code or something. I don’t. But there are a few things I do when my account goes down…whether they help or not, that’s anybody’s guess.
From October 2020 up until today, my @TheSneakerSavant Instagram account has been ‘blocked’, ‘banned’, ‘deleted’, or ‘locked’ around 7 times. And every time it scares the shit out of me. It hasn’t been that scary, lately, because I’ve started divesting my interest, but it is worrisome as it is where I have the most followers and the biggest audience.
I think it all started with a troll, a guy with who I had a difference in opinion with. A guy who had nothing better to do and decided to make my life suffer because of it. It was literally over a disagreement about Warren Lotas dunks. Seriously.
Shortly after he went in on the comments of a few of my posts, calling me all kinds of names, he hit me in the DMs posing like he actually wanted to talk and then it got dark real quick. And then he took his complaints to the rest of the internet by calling into question me, my life, my business, my interests, my history with shoes, my kids and blah blah blah. I found him on other sites - Twitter, Facebook and Reddit - and on other IG accounts making attempts to ‘dox’ me. Stalk much? And remember - this was all because of my ‘meh’ opinion on Warren Lotas dunks. It got to the point where I actually felt violated. I did all I could think to do at the time - I blocked him on every platform I could think of and clarified my position, which was still very ‘meh’. But that wasn’t the end of it. A day or two later, my Instagram account was ‘deleted’. For the first time.
I didn’t really know what to think…I followed their suggestions, looked up their phone number, and did my due diligence. All to no avail. I did some googling and couldn’t really find anything other than people saying ‘it’d probably be back up in a day or two.’ But that’s not what happened. I couldn’t reach a single person, I could find a single customer service email, and their customer service phone number didn’t have any more room for messages. I was at a loss. I had no idea what to do.
The thing is, when something like this happens, you start freaking out. You start thinking - ‘this is one of the only means of communication I’ve shared with people for the past year and suddenly it’s gone? All of the effort I put into this and it’s just gone?’ I really started freaking out. I reached out to Facebook business and got into a really heated argument with one of their customer service agents who eventually told me ‘look, the account is deleted, there is nothing I can do for you.’ And to think…the account I worked day and night for over the course of roughly 5 years was just gone. And all the relationships I made through IG and all of the discussions I’ve had…gone…all because of a troll.
Things got pretty bad when I realized that I was just screaming into the void. No one had any clue what was going on. No one could help. I hit up my friends, other IG people, journalists, even lawyers…and everyone pretty much told me ‘there’s nothing we can do about it.’
Eventually, though, it worked itself out and I got my account back. I felt I needed to document the process I went through in case it ever came up again (and it did… Several times):
10/16/20 approx 9am - I put a post up on my IG business account (@thesneakersavant) and I put my phone down.
10/16/20 approx 9:30 am - I check engagement on the post but see that I’ve been logged out of my IG account.
10/16/20 approx 10 am - my business partner in New Jersey submits an appeal for the account.
10/17/20 approximately 8:15 am - I receive an email from Instagram support that says: "It looks like your account was disabled by mistake. Your account has been reactivated, and you should now be able to log in. We're sorry for any inconvenience. If you have any issues getting back into your account, please let us know."
10/17/20 approx 8:17 am - I log back into my account, take a look at my last post, edit (copy) the text. Hit save. And I’m logged out of my account. I get a message that says ‘Your account has been disabled for violating our terms. Learn how you may be able to restore your account.’
10/17/20 approx 8:18 am - I click ‘learn more’ beneath the message above and am taken to an Instagram support page that says ‘Your account has been deleted for not following our terms. You won’t be able to log into this account and no one else will be able to see it. We’re unable to restore accounts that are deleted for these types of violations.’
10/19/20 approx 8:00 am-12:00 pm - I reach out to FB Business support. They tell me they can't help. I submit a request through Instagram ('My Instagram Account was Deactivated') to explain the situation.
10/19/20 approx 1:00 pm - I receive ANOTHER email from Instagram: 'It looks like your account was disabled by mistake. Your account has been reactivated, and you should now be able to log in. We're sorry for any inconvenience. If you have any issues getting back into your account, please let us know.'
10/19/20 approx 1:30 pm - I attempt to login to my account, but cannot - I am still receiving the 'Your account has been disabled for violating our terms: http://instagram.com/about/legal/terms/.'
10/19/20 approx 3:00 pm-8:00 pm - I attempted to log in unsuccessfully
10/19/20 approx 8:30 pm - I see another ‘we’ve made a mistake’ email from Instagram and decide to just delete the app from my phone.
10/19/20 approx 9:15 pm - I go to my FB business page (the one that’s linked to IG) and see I’ve got a few new messages on IG through the desktop app. I go to instagram.com on my computer, log in successfully.
10/19/20 approx 9:30 pm - I download IG to my phone and log back in - successfully.
What a mess. And at the end of it, I *still* don’t know what happened on *their* back end that caused my account to go down for 3-4 days.
From October 2020 up until around October 2021, I believe my Instagram account has been pulled down 7 times. Each time for more than 24 hours, several for a few days, and one time (June of 2021) for more than 11 days. 11 days! After the 7th day - I was sure that was the end of my account. It was depressing. As a last-ditch effort - I reached out to an old work colleague who happened to be working at one of Facebook’s subsidiaries and this person helped me reinstitute my account on the 11th day. Without the help of an old friend, I’m certain it was the end. My friend even confirmed that my account had been ‘flagged’, but couldn’t give me any reasoning. I’ve never heard a single reason as to *why* my account goes down - but the good news is I went into ‘pro-active’ mode when that one hit and I started branching out a bit more: @byshoef and I started up the podcast, I started another company (@1ToStock), I began posting on Substack, I dusted off my Twitter, and created a separate Instagram account for the NFT talk. So if my main Instagram account goes down, I’m still able to reach at least *some* people.
But let’s put this into context…if I were to tell you that in 2022, one of the top apps in the world that has 1,400,000,000 daily ACTIVE users, but doesn’t actually have an active customer service line, you’d probably tell me that I’m crazy. But that’s exactly what I’ve found. I don’t know a SINGLE person who as actually talked to a SINGLE person who works for customer service at Instagram. I don’t know a single person who has actually had any of their complaints addressed by anyone who works for Instagram itself. And…unfortunately…it makes sense. Think about it: there are 1.4 billion people of all backgrounds and languages using the app and all they have is this tiny little 4-floor building in Menlo Park keeping it all up and running. It’d be an enormous task…I bet their phone lines would be filled with all kinds of idiots calling in to argue with support about how they need to pull down other people’s posts or other people’s comments or…I dunno…just ridiculous time-wasters. And they wouldn’t have anyone to do anything for the product itself. Just dealing with broken shit. So I guess they just chose to forego the whole thing entirely. So on the surface, it makes sense as to why they don’t have an active customer service line.
BUT.
Why don’t they have *paid* customer support? I mean, I’d happily pay up to $100 if I could get my issues addressed in a timely matter. Shit, I might even pay 10 times that to address an issue if it were taking 11 days to rectify. I’d happily pay $25-100 just to talk with someone about it so I could learn how to prevent the issue from happening in the future. I’d even pay for monthly access to customer support. Especially since I have a business account that relies heavily upon Instagram for any income I see from it…
Anyway, most people who follow my account know that I’ve had my issues with IG and have somehow worked through them. I’ve found a lot of helpful tips at this Reddit link, even though I think it’s inactive. I’ve had strangers, friends and colleagues reach out to me regarding their accounts and as far as I can tell, each has been reinstated. I usually act as a therapist for those this happens with - most times it sounds like they just want someone to vent to because IG is *definitely not listening. Recently, a really good friend hit me up and told me that his IG account went down and wasn’t sure what to do, so I sent him the links below. There are some ‘help’ and ‘support’ forms on the Instagram site that are really difficult to find, but any time I find one I just fill it in and hit ‘send’ over and over again until I feel like I’ve done it enough. No clue if it works, but it feels like it. Keep in mind - I know that filling in these customer service forms *looks* extremely trite and of little consequence, but it’s the first thing I do when my account goes down. Even if it is in actuality just a crapshoot, it at least makes me *feel* better. Again, these might not work, don’t always work, and sometimes the links go down or change, but these are the links that work as of today: January 13th, 2022. My suggestion - fill in each of the forms at these links as often as you can:
https://help.instagram.com/contact/1652567838289083
https://help.instagram.com/contact/272476913194545
https://help.instagram.com/contact/396169787183059
https://help.instagram.com/contact/606967319425038
Good luck!
Same thing happened to me, I've been told my account is "disabled", and I had to log on my laptop to be able to get back in. They'll show my comment and label it under "bullying" when I say something like "You women are crazy", but they don't see that it's under a joking manner.
I reported a comment when a racist white person said "BLM is a terrorist organization and big lip George died of some asain drug", but I get a response from ig saying they didn't remove the comment because it didn't "violate their standards".
You have a legit complaint because you run a business, everyone else just cries because their "followers" validate their lives. I've had 3 twitter accounts deleted over some bullshit while I've been called all types of names.
You're a good man and I respect you a great deal, there are always gonna be people who can't respect another person's point of views and opinions, and it's sad. Yeah we gwt mad and be like "I'm never getting back on there", then we start fiening because social media is all we know. Lol! Keep up the great work, and sorry for my long winded comment.