The social media platform, Instagram has shut down several meme accounts which in total exceeded 500 million followers. The users hit back at this move with astonishment and anger.
Reason of mass suspend
Instagram (Source: Daily Mail)
Instagram suspended all of these accounts without any prior notice or warning. However, after taking the action, Instagram sent an e-mail to all the affected users. The e-mail stated that the users were removed for “not following the terms”.
On this, the users reacted with anger for the action taken without giving any specific details. The notice also stated that they are unable to restore the accounts that are suspended for this reason.
Reactions of users on Instagram Account Ban
Many of the affected users took to Twitter to express their anger for the same.
- A Twitter user with username @umCaige expressed his anger for his two suspended Instagram accounts @autist and @yerdank. According to him, he had more than 850,000 followers. He made more than $30,000 from his accounts.
@instagram you just deleted all of my accounts for absolutely no reason, no warning, and no context behind this. (30 million+ followers worth of accounts deleted in 24 hours) #fuckinstagram #reactivateyerdank #reactivateautist pic.twitter.com/nJY6CvkQkW
— yerdank (@umCaige) July 26, 2019
- One of the users stated the action as “endgame”. As many of the heavily followed Instagram meme users faced the biggest loss within a few seconds. This includes @Finest.Investions who had more than 13 million followers alone.
this is the endgame. 40m+ followers and over $600k+ in accounts lost in two days. @instagram @facebook fucking own up to what you did and rollback, you can’t stay silent in this. peronally lost 600k+ followers for no good reason. #reactivatespicy #memepurge pic.twitter.com/xpgy8KrH2d
— Ben (@spicymp4) July 27, 2019
- Several users started posting their reactions on the action with a hashtag #memepurge and called Facebook to look into the matter. As Facebook owns Instagram.
Let's get an F for all the meme pages that got deleted #instapurge #memepurge pic.twitter.com/g4ewl8kPW8
— Blank 🗝 (@kthankscya) July 27, 2019
Instagram Policy Update
Last week, Instagram updates its policies regarding disabling accounts. However, it is nowhere mentioned that which policies were violated.
Possible Reasons
Instagram suspends meme accounts with heavy followers (Source: Fox 5 San Diego)
The affected users can expect one of the following reasons for the suspension of their accounts:
- Some of the humour pages could have violated Facebook’s objectionable content policies.
- One of the reasons is many of the Instagram accounts are bought and sold which is strictly against the policies.
- Many meme accounts use people’s information without their consent.
- Some meme pages on Instagram even sell verification services and retrieve the deactivated usernames. This service is only available to media. This also comes under violation of policies.
All the suspended accounts’ users will have to wait for Instagram’s clarification about the same.
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