Many users have been receiving dialogs like the above from the company recently. Why?
Instagram has been mass terminating accounts under false allegations…
These are serious allegations for ANY company to levy against someone because of the ramifications involved. Normally this also means law enforcement getting involved while your name and reputation potentially being damaged in the process. And Meta remains SILENT about it.
Furthermore, those who are PAYING for Meta Verified (of which one of the so called perks is priority access to direct customer support, has been effectively a lie of “we’ll gladly take your money but not give you the service that is part of this deal“. Why would anyone want to continue depending on this platform, let alone give them your money and access to personal information? To be more blunt, that is bullshit.
Unrelated to all of this, I decided to self-remove myself from Instagram last week (this was one of the recent catalysts, but the final straw was this – the above makes it look like an even smarter move). But I had to log back in again because I forgot to download my data and you need to wait 7 days before you can shutdown your account again; that is now done (completely off of Meta’s platforms now). Note that this is just the account I created in 2024 (my original Facebook and Instagram accounts were disabled years ago).
As for those trying to get their account(s) reinstated again, realize much of the support there is automated with a good fraction of it being handled by AI. That isn’t the issue (AI can be useful for detecting some of the most heinous content that previously was handled mostly by humans who had to look at that garbage (we are talking about psychologically scarring material that human moderators were looking at for hours). If AI can be the first line of defense at weeding that garbage out with nearly a 100% accuracy, great. But that currently isn’t the case (just look at the number of postings on the Instagram sub-Reddit).
The issue with Meta is not having great processes after that for dealing with actual false positives AND having sufficient human customer service representatives to speak with once a ticket has been escalated. Thus many have received noticed of their account being permanently disabled while being wrongfully accused of CSAM/child sexual exploitation which to me, is grounds for lawsuits when it is a false accusation without proof because of an overzealous AI that hasn’t been fine tuned to parse out this stuff with higher degrees of accuracy.
As for relying on a social media platform (one that is led by an asshole like Mark Zuckerberg) for your photos, videos/reels, contacts, and busineses, that is a fools errands. And remaining on it even if one gets their account reinstated, is like being in that lousy relationship where you just cannot leave. Each of these platforms can take that account away from anyone at anytime. I personally do not utilize these “free” platforms for any business purposes (only for side hobbies) and the way these companies are conducting themselves is good enough reason for me wanting to take control of whatever I can, into my own hands as much as reasonably possible.
I’ve said it before. These major corporations only care about $$$ (and whatever personal info you are willing to turn over to them in the process). Meta will ingest users photos/videos at will for their AI training (think of the future ramifications of this when it is being conducted by a company that lacks ethics). The power lies in the customer to vote with their wallet. In the case of these social media platforms, you either stay on them while also allowing them to harvest your personal data/track everything you do, OR send a message in the easiest way possible by utilizing them as little as possible or better yet, walking away. This is what has been currently motivating me to reduce my footprint/usage of these “free” platforms and wherever possible, off of them completely.
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