Avid Instagram users have one thing they never want to read when they try to log in to their account: "Your account has been deleted for not following our terms. You won't be able to log into this account . . . ". Considering that any deletion made to your Instagram account means throwing away all your account's content, it's a bit scary. If you purposely deleted it, you'd know the consequences, so it's fine. But if your account was deleted by Instagram itself, you are probably gonna go crazy getting help, because 99% of the time, it is hard to reach out to Instagram.
Instagram is a free platform, which is basically why it's difficult to demand for anything. But even if it's free, consumers are still customers. This is why people still need answers and customer support.
Take the case of this photographer for example. He says that he used Instagram for his works and it really improved the promotion of his business. The traffic received by his website increased rapidly. He loved the whole Instagram thing knowing that he found a new best friend that will help him in his business. However he woke up to the dreaded notification just one day after he created his account. He was disappointed and at the same time confused by the termination of his account. He went through the images that he uploaded to find out which might have caused him to "step on some of Instagram rules". He saw one image that had partial nudity which is not exactly nudity, because only the man's back and a woman's arms are visible in the image. He was still as confused knowing that other people post photos that are nearer to nude than what he had posted.
He decided to create another account using a different email and uploaded images that had zero percent nudity. He got the followers and the likes back, which is good. But the next day, his account was deleted once again. He wrote to Instagram using their help center but to no response. He also wrote to Facebook but no one seemed to care.
We do hope that Instagram gets to see what happened to this account. Whether it was an automated action or not, consumers need answers.
There are people lucky enough to be assisted with their account deletion, like Andres Iniesta. He is a designer from Madrid who shares the same name with the FC Barcelona soccer player. He was suddenly robbed off his account to give the account to the soccer player. He was then told by his followers that they started seeing the soccer player on their feed, even though they aren't really fans of the sport. He tried to get help through the contact forms but to no avail. When he wrote on Medium all his feelings towards the event, eventually he got assisted. Instagram later released a message saying they have corrected the mistake and they are in deep apology to what happened to Iniesta.
