I need to vent some about social media, so feel free to move on if this doesn’t interest you.
Today I received some baffling news from instagram: apparently my account has been suspended. For what reason, they do not say. I certainly don’t know.
So I’m faced with a choice: let my account die, which is fine with me since it was empty, I mean- I have zero posts on my picture feed, or submit my info for… IDK, review, or something. Review- by somebody, or something, somewhere. No idea. They don’t say.
Let me state that I haven’t the foggiest idea of what is going on here. Literally the only reason I have this account is for following a few random celebrities. I have never posted any pictures, myself. I made one comment, total: that old one that I talked about on here; the one I made on Cady Groves’ account, some number of years ago. For context, I made this comment intentionally so that it would be difficult for anyone to find. I made it on a non-famous dead person’s abandoned account, on their first post, made something like a decade ago. And to even get to the picture I commented on you would have scroll past some odd hundreds or thousands of other pictures, first. Very, very few people- if any- have ever come across this comment and read it in it’s entirety.
And it was an innocuous post, anyways. No politics, for example.
So I haven’t the faintest idea of what instagram thinks is the problem, and they’re certainly not telling me anything. It’s possible that they don’t know, themselves.
But for whatever reason, the account is as good as dead, it seems. The general consensus online is that when this happens the account is unrecoverable, which… is fine, I have nothing on it, anyways. But imagine if I did- the internet is filled with people complaining about this problem that have lost a ton of important stuff because of it: old pictures, personal contacts, valuable information about this or that.
Instagram wants me to “verify” my account. Who is asking this, I do not know. Is it a person? A machine? An AI? Nobody?
“It” wants me to send a selfie. Why? I have never uploaded anything to my account; what good would a selfie do him/it/them? And it seems that when they ask you this, you may as well not bother, nobody will get back to you anyways.
I haven’t any idea. I guess I will make a new account. But then- what if this happens again for some incomprehensible reason?
IDK, but apparently this is a serious problem with instagram- all sorts of people are complaining about being flagged, banned, shut down, etc. for no obvious reason and at random times, with no recourse. And when you are banned or whatever, that’s it, everything that was there is gone, forever.
The reason I didn’t use my account for anything was specifically to avoid this issue. The impression I have gotten in the past from others is that if you use instagram too much, and you aren’t rich and famous, you will inevitably lose everything at some point. Say the wrong thing- even if you don’t know what the wrong thing is- and bam, that’s that. I mean for God’s sake, don’t even dare mention vaccines, in any context, even if you say something supportive of them, lol.
So, my account is empty.
But apparently, that is a bad choice, too. If you use your account too little, instagram will apparently think you are a bot, or something, and ban you regardless. Or so I’ve heard. IDK if that’s true in my case. Why would a bot do nothing?
So if you use the platform too much, you will lose everything. Use it too little, and you will lose everything. So there is a “sweet spot” there that must be found, and you will need to walk that tightrope, daily, to keep your account going.
Or- just don’t use the service. Which is the logical thing to do, anyways. It’s inherently a platform for rich people. If you’re not on the pop charts, don’t bother. It’s purely visual- there is no reason for a suburban person (or even a non visual) person to use it.
Christ, what a ridiculous clusterfuck. What a stupid service, lol.
It’s almost as if Zuckerberg and Co. are actively hostile to non-famous people. Which… might in fact be the case, lol. I’m still salty about Myspace, lel. Facebook was always shitty and boring in comparison.
Regardless instagram is just… dumb, lol. IDK what is going on with my account, but I guess it might have something to do with me occasionally downloading celebrity pictures, like stuff they post publicly on their picture feeds, their stories, etc. I do this to share their stuff with others. Which, being celebrities, they WANT me to do. I mean- it’s the reason they post them, so that their fans can see the pictures and videos and share them with their friends, thus creating new fans in the process. It’s the lifeblood of their careers. But I also know that Zuckerberg HATES this- he actively discourages it, even going as far as making it difficult as possible for users to see and download things like celebrity content. Instagram has gone after and shut down all kinds of browser plugins that let people look at and share celebrity stuff.
But since celebrity stuff is the lifeblood of instagram itself- I mean, it’s the only reason many (most?) people use the service, people into this stuff get caught in a ridiculous, illogical bind.
Real baffling and frankly stupid, all of it. What a dumb, dumb service.
Social media in general kinda sucks, tho. IDK, it sucks for so many reasons, frankly, that it would take me weeks to go through them all, so I’m stopping here. Dinner in a few minutes, anyways.
Well, whatever.
This shit is just really, really stupid, lol.