Kakou Collective is a Hawai’i based company that creates products with art inspired by the culture and natural environment of the islands. As per their about writeup on their website:
Founded in 2017, Kakou Collective creates and shares authentic artistic expression that inspires a connection to the cultural values, traditions, and communities of Hawaiʻi.
From thoughtfully selecting the type of plants we draw, to the collections we curate, we weave Hawaiʻi’s story and our love of local culture into all we do so that you can too.
Our goal is to share our love and knowledge for local culture through original artwork and to create quality products that share Hawaiʻi’s authentic story across the globe. We do our best to not only ensure that all of our products are made using ethical and sustainable practices, but that they are manufactured as locally as possible.
The company’s founder, Native Hawaiian artist and entrepreneur Kea Peters also had a 50,000 follower social media presence for the company on Instagram. Two days prior to the 2026 Merrie Monarch Festival (which was held from April 5-11 in Hilo), she found that she was unable to login to the account as it had been suspended for allegedly “violating community guidelines”. Several other accounts of hers were also suspended (since they used the same phone number).
Hawai’i News Now ended up covering this story which also serves as a reminder for anyone using any social media platform for business purposes, to make sure to keep everything separated from your personal information. In her case, it was her sons account which got suspended because she had created that account (and several others including their Facebook account) with the same phone number; Meta’s backend system effectively saw that relationship and suspended all the accounts.
It seems Peter’s is now going through the appeals process which is known to be a quagmire at Meta because a lot of that is also now handled by AI bots; even paying Meta customers have a difficult time getting an actual human for customer service. Since 2022, the company has laid off over 43,000 employees (with another 8,000 starting on May 20th). I do wish her the best with going through that process and getting her original account back (regardless, she does need to adjust how they are managed going forward and making sure the business stuff is not entangled with the personal ones). But I digress.
Due to COPPA, platforms with jurisdiction in the United States have strict requirements for protecting the privacy and personal information of those under the age of 13. Most platforms and services however tend to simply disallow children under 13 from using their services completely due to the cost and work involved in complying with the law. In Meta’s case (for Facebook, Instagram, and Threads), they require a user to be at least 13 years of age (info for Instagram).
With the increased use of AI also making some of these determinations (which includes potential false positives as has been the case with accounts being flagged for child exploitation where their AI agents have been making some mistakes), business owners/anyone using any platform which they do not have direct control over, needs to make sure they understand all of the rules (terms of use/service and privacy policies) and to keep everything separate from their personal stuff (including e-mail accounts and phone numbers).
While Kakou Collective also has their own website, much of their engagement naturally occurs via their Instagram social media account. Unfortunately, most business owners do not have the expertise nor time to implement those engagement features directly integrated on to those sites (and hiring someone to do that is another expense they would need to absorb).
Finally, never entrust all of your data to any platform. Keep actual backups of photos and videos on your computer as both Google Photo (CSAM false positive) and iCloud users have experienced being completely locked out from their accounts. Most every major platform has a method for downloading your personal data (which can serve as your physical backup for posts, messages, photos, and videos). My own self de-platforming adventure is not directly related to this story, but is one that is mainly about setting up and running what I can myself (self-hosting again like what I did a decade ago) and having control (versus being at the whim of whatever these platforms decide).
Note: this is the first test posting to the Fediverse (ActivityPub and ATproto)
