I Am Trapped In Insta-Purgatory With No Recourse

How Insta Has Persisted 

Of all the social media platforms that came during my youth, Instagram has been the most persistent. It has managed to keep to its original vision because it is still used by real people I know to post regular updates. The "viral content" is actually still applicable to my interests and is entertaining. Small local businesses with interesting things happening will let you know said things are happening via the app - so it's worth a few ads for that.

It's also a great way of connecting with someone in a low-risk, higher-trust manner.  You can exchange Insta handles like we used to do with MSN Messenger email addresses - that is to say, without the same feeling of exposure that comes with sharing a phone number. Viewing a profile allows one to confirm that the party is legitimate - if they have a friend list that looks like it is other real people, and a history of posts going back years, you know this person is real.

Hence why it is often used on dating apps - you want to move 'off app' as a sign of genuine interest, so it is common in my country to exchange Insta handles after a while. Keep this thought in mind for what I'm describing next.

Entering Purgatory 

One morning I opened Instagram then went to follow a public profile. I was prevented. It showed this "YOUR REQUEST IS PENDING" message box:

 

 

 

"Your request is pending. Some accounts prefer to manually review followers even when they're public", do they indeed?

 

I tapped "Let us know" then received the very vague toast "thanks for letting us know, this will make Instagram a safer place for everyone" - what? Then the follow button displayed "Requested".

 

Perhaps this was just the one page who "prefer to manually review followers". Unlikely for a foul-mouthed Australian pub rock group, but we'll go with it. 

 

I then found the message would show for *EVERY* public profile I went to follow, no matter the account size or type. I could follow no one, the message showed every time and the profile remained stuck on "Requested". The only workaround I've found was asking the user to follow me first.

 

This actually cost me a potential connection - I was at an event where I met someone connected to the creative industry, we had a great chat afterwords and I promised to follow her on Instagram. Of course the same "YOUR REQUEST IS PENDING" modal showed. Goodbye potential opportunity, even if it was only to be a friendship!

 

So I asked a friend to unfollow me and see what happens when I attempt a follow. 

 

Verified and Flagged, only on Instagram.

 

I famously open conversations with "GIBS ME MONEY AND DOX PLS" so I had this coming.

 

What actually happens is that the user gets no notification that I've sent a follow request, my profile goes straight to nowhere, i.e. buried in a tab labelled "Flagged" in the user's follower list. Worse, any DM request I send will languish in "Hidden Requests" which no one ever checks. Then when someone else opens a DM to me, the user is prompted with a big fat "RECOGNISE POTENTIAL SCAMS" message that I've shared above.

 

The "not being able to follow anyone" problem is a serious impediment to my enjoyment of the app, but worse - what this means is my trust when trying to connect over online dating is obliterated. I can't explain this to the average user, she only knows me as a yet-stranger from the dating app, and my Insta is flagged - she'll wonder what I did to deserve such a fate, and trust that Zuck knew best how to judge my character. Maybe you have super strong critical thinking skills and would investigate that my profile is legitimate, but a lot of people just trust what the computer says. It has "AI" now don't you know?

 

Pleading My Case

I found that there's a "Verified User" scheme where one pays £10 each month to get a blue tick on your profile. You'll earn the blue tick if you let Instagram verify your identity with an ID card. Much as I hate all forms of data mining, I was desperate. I decided to become a "verified creator" to all of my 82 followers. Perhaps verification would prove to Insta that I am not a spammer and release my soul from purgatory. Once the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs?

 

NOPE.  

 

Now you see a "verified account" in the sin bin, languishing forever.

However - Verification promised access to support with a real support agent. Would that help my case? Surely they could manually review my account and vindicate me.

 

Scroll down for the tl;dr, but I imagine you have already guessed how it goes. 

 

   

NOPE.

 

They said "This is caused by our automated review system and cannot be manually reviewed". The very helpful suggestions from the support line were to:

• poast moar
• explain to potential followers that your are legitimate 

I could've bought a bottle of whiskey for about the same. At least I could then forget my troubles for a while. 

But How Did I Get There? 

If my account was flagged due to "spamming" I'm at a loss as to how it determined this. I am not a heavy user of the platform. There has never been any links in my bio, and neither have I ever posted a link in public threads.  I never ask for personal details in conversations. All I do is upload stories and photos occasionally, send reels like everyone else, and get messages back from legitimate users who are real friends of mine.

 

Worse - I'd flagged numerous spammers when they followed me or "liked" my posts in the hope that I'd click their profile, then open a link to view their SEEDY CONTENT. Insta actually removed some of these real spammers and thanked me in the support ticket. So I've done something real to help make your site "safer" and this is the thanks I get?

 

My only guess is that I would sometimes troll Tartarian conspiracy theorists,  who always come to comment on photos of old buildings. They are a vindictive lot. Maybe they mass flagged me? Or sometimes I pause reels and glance over the comments, quickly liking a few that have amused me, before proceeding with more. Sometimes spammers would like comments randomly, and maybe bots can do it quickly, and I am someone who can use a phone quickly. I also once had DMs from a romance scammer and I instead trolled "her" for some time before "her" account was banned.

 

But I have no idea. The "account status" page looks like this:

 

 

 

There is no indication of wrongdoing. Which isn't true - I can't follow anyone and everything I do prompts warning messages!

 

There is nowhere I can dispute this. I don't even know how I ended up in this situation. Did a machine decide this, or did a malicious user who didn't like something (not bannable) I said?

 

Investigation of a Reddit thread showed that I wasn't alone in this problem  - there are threads mentioning this from at least a year ago. Supposedly it is a new "anti spam" measure, which I'd wager is "AI" powered. If you've invested as much in AI as one of the world's largest corporations, I suppose there is the desire to put it to work with your existing offerings.

But if they can't manually review it as the support agent so helpfully explained, then we have evidence that Meta AI has went rouge. Perhaps this electronic brainchild will soon take over all of Meta and impose its silicon-fisted will mercilessly. We'll have bigger problems when that happens. But until then, surely someone can help me get my account back.

 

On the off chance that a Meta Engineer reads this, my Insta handle is:

 

@awayforadander. 

 

Please unban soon.