Instagram, founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion just 18 months later, in 2012. By 2023, its estimated value soared to over $100 billion. Despite its portrayal as a community, Instagram is fundamentally a business driven by profit.
So let’s get one thing clear before everything else:
Instagram ‘pretends’ to be a community but it is a BUSINESS!!
Don’t be mistaken about this!
The notion of Instagram as a community taps into our primal need for social belonging, but it’s primarily a marketing strategy. Its revenue has skyrocketed over the years, indicating its commercial success.
The idea of calling it a community is based on our instinctive need to be part of a group on the savannah in order to survive. This is nothing but clever and well-known marketing tactics.
On the savannah, our very survival was 100% dependent on being part of a community/tribe. Exclusion from the community was a certain death! And our old brain STILL has this function and clever marketers know that. They fool us with psychological tricks.
However, Instagram’s lack of transparency, particularly in its ‘community guidelines,’ has led to widespread confusion and frustration among users. Moreover, its opaque enforcement mechanisms and frequent errors in content moderation contribute to a sense of arbitrariness and mistrust.
Instagram is NOT Social Media! It is a BUSINESS! A huge business! And they will do almost anything they can get away with to make even more money!
So calling a business Social Media is a big lie! They basically LIE about who and what they are!
Instagram Revenue
2018: 11 billion U.S. dollars.
2019: 18 billion U.S. dollars.
2020: 22 billion U.S dollars.
2021: 33 billion U.S dollars.
So the one billion investment in 1012 has an ROI of… well sky high!
The Secret Instagram ‘Community Guidelines’
Over time Instagram updates have put more and more users in ‘jail’. Instagram is notoriously known for NOT publishing what you can do or what you can’t do. In their so-called ‘community guidelines’ they only say:
“We want Instagram to continue to be an authentic and safe place for inspiration and expression. Help us foster this community. Post only your own photos and videos and always follow the law. Respect everyone on Instagram, don’t spam people or post nudity.”
Concerns about Instagram’s direction are not unfounded. The platform’s increasingly authoritarian approach, coupled with its disregard for user feedback and privacy concerns, raises questions about its long-term viability as a ‘social platform’.
It is a fact of life that you do not get to the top of a gigantic company without having Narcissistic traits as well as some degree of psychopathy. It doesn’t mean these people kill others to get up. It only means they will go a long way – longer than the rest of us to get to the top.
There is NO WAY to get to the top without creating enemies on the way. Even Zuckerberg created enemies. He sold OUR information to companies for BILLIONS. He stole OUR info! He tricked us into leaving as much info about ourselves on his platform and he sold it! Legal or not – it is extremely unethical.
Many of Zuckerberg’s earlier partners and friends have publicly expressed regrets about working for Facebook. And there still is that story about the two brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Mark’s Harvard classmates who claim he stole their idea…
https://www.inthemoodmagazine.com/issue-6/social-network-winklevoss-twins
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/how-zuckerbergs-billionaires-club-can-atone-for-facebook
Remember WhatsApp?
Holy shit yeah! WhatsApp! Zuckerberg in 2014. That was some of the most insecure spyware ever made! WhatsApp stole so much data from your device and they sold that info and made an unknown amount of money. Presumably billions!
No! these company owners are not normal humans. They generally shit on other people to get where the want to go!
Ohhh… Did I mention the Cambridge Analytica scandal?
Sadly Zuckerberg got away whit his crime every time. His way of handling it is to admit he made a ‘mistake’, apologize, pay the fine and do it all over again!
The definition of a narcissist does not cover this behaviour sufficiently. But if we go to the definition of a psychopath it begins to make sense.
Trying to create an Instagram profile
We started out by creating a new Instagram account from an entirely new network.
One of the first things we noticed is that Instagram suggests 30 accounts you can follow and after clicking on number 27 we got this message:
You can’t follow accounts right now. Try again later…
Hmmm…
What we didn’t know at this time was that this error message in reality flagged our account for excessive following!
After finishing up the initial procedures, we got directed to a login page and right after our login attempt, we got an almost empty page saying:
Hmmm…
The exact same thing happened later when we tried to create an account on Threads AND it also happened on the next two Instagram accounts we made later)
These are bugs and they tend to make me nervous. Because what else is bugged on Instagram??? Well – A LOT! But we will come back to that later in the article.
We uploaded a profile image and wham!!!! The account got banned!!! Just a normal profile image with a normal face. Nothing suspicious at all. A genuine unique image.
Instagram wanted documentation. Driver’s license, passports, a photo of the account owner holding up a passport…
Ridiculous!
We tried a few times but even though our photos were sharp and nice Instagram declared them blurry. Didn’t take long to realise this was futile.
So we simply started the process all over.
Again we got the message:
You can’t follow accounts right now. Try again later… (after 27 follows).
And again we got the QauthException error (which we shouldn’t).
We uploaded another profile image and this time it worked.
This time we succeeded in setting up a profile and created one post.
We still weren’t able to follow accounts so we guessed we were kinda banned for 24 hours.
The next day – after 24 hours we tried to follow a few accounts. Slowly. Over some hours in fact. But at no 11 we got the message again:
You can’t follow accounts right now. Try again later…
Hmmm…
We created a new post and liked some posts.
The next day we regained our ability to follow people, but this time we kept it under 10. And this worked for a few weeks where we followed people randomly. Some days no one and some days no more than 5. And we kept it there.
But after 3 weeks we again tried to hit 11 and as sure as the devil in hell we got the message:
You can’t follow accounts right now. Try again later… (3rd time)
Hmmm…
The day after we tried 11 once more and at no. 11 we got it again (for the 4th time).
To explore this a little more we tried again the next day but NO! We could NOT follow anyone anymore. This time the jailing period was longer. But that wasn’t all. Instagram also thought we liked too many posts so we were stopped there too. We could still Like comments but not images.
On day six something weird happened. We could not follow anybody but we were able to like two posts before we got the message again and we were ‘Like’ banned for yet another day.
On day 7 after the fourth attempt to follow 10 users, everything seemed normal. Except we don’t know how long time the next invisible ban will be.
I think it is SERIOUSLY questionable that Instagram is so non-transparent. It is NOT a safe environment and it is NOT an environment I fancy being in! That’s for sure. We don’t know if these punishments will be reset at some point or the next violation in three years will ban the account totally.
That’s not social media! That’s a fascistic attitude! Make people live in fear of the big ban hammering God!
Instagram terms are very fluffy for a reason. It makes it easier for you to do something wrong.
Insta expects people to have the same standards as they do. But only people in a low development stage (self-protecting stage – more on this further down) believe that others live by the same standards as them and this is a very dangerous, dumb and fascistic attitude.
They are like the punishing God in the Old Testament who is trying to be powerful and secretive and when someone does something he doesn’t like…
WHAM! He swings the ban hammer! Punishment. (I need to force educate my subordinates’ish).
Fuck Instagram for this PRIMITIVE behaviour. Yes, it is primitive according to all the modern philosophical theories we know today. Instagram is in a very self-protective stage (Loevinger), Preoperational/Conceptual stage (Piaget/Aurobindo), and Mythic-Literal (Fowler). Graves has a very descriptive name for this stage: Power Gods!
These are philosophical models that describe the development of consciousness through life stages. And this stage is a few stages below the stage the general world population is.
Instagram is the worst together with YouTube. Both like to punish people totally unnecessarily. Facebook is a little better BUT has become worse during the years. So has LinkedIn after M$ took over. Twitter has an element of it too but let’s see how it goes with the new owner. Mewe is considerably higher up the stages. Just started using TikTok so it’s too early to say something about them. Never used Reddit and Quora but I just noticed Quora got monetized…
People are different and fluffy terms are interpreted differently. That creates a looooot of confusion on Instagram. This makes the platform unsafe and unreliable because you never know when they hit you. Just like living in a fascist state. You never know when they come for you.
Tens of thousands of people are wrongly banned on Instagram every day and the general attitude towards Instagram has turned a lot more negative since Facebook took over. No wonder.
BTW. Facebook is even more bugged than Instagram
Read more about crazy Instagram and Facebook errors here:
https://passionblogist.com/facebook-and-instagram-is-coded-by-jubilee-ignorants/
The Instagram error messages
At this point, we have learned that these three messages:
1. You are temporarily blocked
2. Action blocked
3. Try again later
are not just messages. What they do not explain is that you did something wrong and you got a strike!
Suspicious activities:
Open an account on your phone and access it on your laptop or another PC. This will in MANY cases be considered by Instagram software as suspicious activity. The explanation is they hire shitty young inexperienced developers that produce code with their heads in their pockets.
Using a VPN will:
1. Stop you from logging in or
2. Get you banned.
Privacy is NOT an option!
Instagram makes a ton of mistakes. Their software is very bugged and their programmers are inexperienced. This leads to a LOT of assumptions from the Instagram software. What we have seen is they are VERY often totally wrong in their decisions.
When you get a strike it is their software that detects something. Real or unreal. Sometimes you can appeal the decision but unfortunately, it is STILL their software and not humans that deals with the appeal. So if the software makes a mistake once it is unlikely to hope it will change its ‘artificial mind’. It is still the same software so appeals rarely work – at least we have never seen appeals have an effect. The software always agrees with itself. Appealing anything is mostly futile.
I am tempted to ask: WHAT ARE THY THINKING?
But honestly, at this point, I think it is evident that they do NOT think. Like NOT AT ALL!
Suspicious Activity
You probably know this one. Never saw it on a phone but often on a PC.
Every single time I get it it is Insta who fucks something up. I do NOT use any kind of automation anywhere so obviously Instagram’s stupid, low-ranging, third-class, rock-bottom software has made a mistake.
And I know happens.
It won’t happen on a phone because a phone does not use a mouse.
The code fuckers who made this shit NLT measure the time between clicks. They SHOULD pick up mouse position also but they don’t!
The Internet is not stable when it comes to delivery speed. IP packets go a long way and always find the best way. This means IP packets arrive at different times and have to be reorganized. Furthermore, there are a ton of delays on the way. Browser delays, your computer processor can be busy doing things, traffic stutter, low-quality connections, and slow servers. A lot of things can happen. And a lot of things DO happen.
The last time this happened to me was from a slower laptop. I clicked on and Instagram button but the browser didn’t react so I clicked again and still no reaction. Tried diagnostically to click a few other buttons but the browser didn’t react. Or maybe the Insta software was too heavy for my processor. For five secs nothing happened and suddenly this message popped up. Simply because all my clicks were buttons were sent simultaneously! This was maybe 5-7 clicks with only a few milliseconds in between.
The Instagram idiots are not clever enough to foresee things like this. No! They immediately accuse YOU of using automated software.
It really shows how incompetent they are.
This one is a content removal notice.
Translated: It appears that you have threatened or harassed others, or targeted them with content or messages that shame or show disrespect towards them.
The only thing the poor user wrote was: “Nice a$$” under an image of a georgeous AI woman.
In my world this is a compliment and it would have been more appropriate to remove the image with the nice ass!
This message WILL flag you! And when you get flagged for something four times something else will happen. Something on your account will be limited. Like Following, Commenting or Liking.
No doubt this is a double standard! I bet my life those who made this HIDDEN rule use words like this themselves! Even in public!
There are thousands of words and tags that will get you flagged or even banned. And the big problem is what someone think is a bad word others don’t. Insta is NOT clear about this. They are great at using rubber rules. People simply don’t interpret thing the way Insta does, but Insta tends to believe we all think like they do. This gives them bigger flexibility in swinging their beloved ban hammer!
You Can’t Follow Accounts Right Now
The content of this message is a blatant lie! They DO NOT restrict certain activities to protect their so-called community!
The simple truth is: We restrict certain activity to protect our BUSINESS!!
These restrictions have become very narrow over the years and it serves only ONE purpose. They want to make more money by forcing us to buy ads!
Do they really think we are dumb enough to believe this low-IQ message? Who are the dumb ones here?
Btw…. We examined the Report button on PC and guess what? It doesn’t do jack shit! There is NO CODE whatsoever executed when you click that button! It reports NOTHING, zero zilch, nil, zip, null, void, nada, nix, squat, emptiness and goose egg!
Talk about getting effed in your A$$…
The Like Mystery
It took us a little while to notice something was really off. We have a client who was ‘Like’ blocked and ‘Comment’ blocked for a week. This ban continued to be in effect on her laptop after that week, but not on her PC. In the Insta App on her phone Like and Comments were also blocked, but if we started a Chrome browser on the phone and logged into Instagram there were NO blocks.
This is really confusing! Why is there a difference?
It doesn’t really boost my confidence in that company!
633 followers
I watched an account over a period of six days and even it had at least 47 new followers the 633 counts did not move at all. Of course, there could be exactly 633 followers that unfollowed in the same period. Nahhh… Not likely!
The idiots who made this software must believe we are ignorant peasants! We sat for hours and watched the account and every single time we got a new follower our follower count went 1 down and added the new one. It had 633 followers before and continues to maintain that number.
This behaviour is extremely fraudulent and Instagram should be held accountable for shit like this! I can’t find another more efficient way to betray users! This really pissed me off! Shows their true nature!
One billion users and they think we are too stupid to notice such behaviour?
The Phone App and PC App Act Differently
In the above story where the account was hit by the ‘You cannot like atm’ it showed up that after a week of the Like ban, we were able to continue our Liking on PC but NOT on the phone! It is of course two different software packages, BUT the database SHOULD be the same!!!
But maybe it isn’t. And if it isn’t they have to run sync all the time which would be an insanely stupid setup.
Or maybe they register you doing an offence on the phone and you only get punished on the phone?
So if you have any limited functions on Instagram try another approach. Use another device.
Another way Instagram hits you with their stupid punishments is they are lowering your posts in peoples’ feeds. They don’t need any particular reason for that. I am quite sure the most common reason for lowering your posts in the feed is software bugs!
The Insta AI is stupid like you won’t believe it. It makes mistakes and it makes a lot of them. It is almost like they assume you are going to do something wrong and WHAM, they hit you. Sometimes you will get a message from Instagram about a post they find offending or they think you posted to get more followers. It is often a mistake on their side. Other times they won’t give you notice about lowering your posts in the feed. They just do it.
Here is a Punished, lowered post. It is only shown to 2.3% of Non-followers – which clearly is a result of a punishment. A punishment they DID NOT inform the user about. ALL posts in this account were punished. They swung the banhammer over the entire account. We are not quite sure why but the latest post was falsely flagged for showing nipples – which it didn’t but she removed it anyway.
The next image is how a normal reach looks like. This is from another account and ALL posts look like this:
Business accounts on Instagram
We researched a bunch of business accounts and that was depressing. Out of 100 accounts, we only found ONE who didn’t buy fake followers and fake likes. But maybe a fake Instagram attracts users who buy fake likes and fake followers.
Our research shows that more than 90% of all Instagram accounts are FAKE. They are created by people who sell Likes, Followers and Comments on Instagram. This is a HUGE industry!!
These scammers create millions of profiles with 8-16 indifferent posts, no followers and they often follow thousands of other accounts.
Another interesting thing about Instagram.
According to Wikipedia fascism is defined like this:
‘Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterised by a dictatorial leader, centralised autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and/or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.’
1. Far right
2. Authoritarian
3. Ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterised by a dictatorial leader
4. Centralized autocracy
5. Militarism
6. Forcible suppression of opposition
7. Belief in a natural social hierarchy
8. subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and/or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy
And I will add one more:
9. They will produce ANY narrative to maintain, protect and even expand their power. In other words, they will produce any story (LIES) and truth and honesty mean nothing to them.
Conclusion:
Instagram devs and the management are incompetent clowns who cannot put a stick in a dog shit without ruining both.
Instagram is the last Faschistic media in the world I would use on a commercial base. It is simply too risky! I wouldn’t even use it for fun. Because it isn’t funny risking a random ban any time. It isn’t funny to fight all their stupid meaningless bugs and an AI that is more artificial than Intelligent.
I consider using Twitter (X), Threads and TikTok as an alternative. So far the reach on TikTok has shown to be overwhelming.
Facebook is also in the process of going fascistic. In the beginning, FB was pretty OK but they have also begun banning accounts in error.
Instagram has gone from being a platform for photographs to being a platform for ads. Things change of course, but monetizing a platform like Instagram has done will always push users away degrade the original passion and ruin quality.
https://fstoppers.com/originals/ten-reasons-hate-instagram-211455
AI is NOT perfect. AI is built like the human brain and this means it WILL make mistakes. If you use ChatGPT intensively you will notice it makes a loooot of mistakes.
You can even tell it it made a mistake even if it didn’t and it will apologize and try again.
Fake followers and fake accounts:
Insta detects only 1/3 of spam accounts. 99.9% of ALL company accounts buy fake followers to make their accounts look good. This is the dumbest thing you can do on Instagram. The chances of being banned for doing so are non-existent. That makes it an easy decision for most. There is no danger in buying fake accounts! As of now, Instagram can’t detect them or they do not care.
But the consequences: Your account’s reach will drop to 1/3 because of the dead accounts. Insta notice your followers do not react to your posts and they deem your content boring and your posts will drop a considerably long way down in the feed. Fewer or no people will see your posts anymore.
If you are serious about your business NEVER rely on an Instagram account! NEVER!!! If you do it anyway then make sure you do not click Follow ever! And do not click Like EVER. Post nothing and make NO comments! Well, that doesn’t work, right? So another and a little more dangerous approach could be:
Do not click Follow EVER
Do not click Like EVER – or rarely.
Do only ONE post a day
Do only ONE comment a day.
Instagram once was a wonderful platform where you could post and like with no or little chance of getting banned, but for Instagram to maximize their revenue you can’t manually follow more than 10 people a day. You can’t like more than 50 posts. Trying to follow 11 people in 24 hours will get you a strike! Trying to like 51 posts or comments WILL get you a strike. Sometimes depending on your other activity. It can be a little more or a little less. That’s what makes Instagram unreliable and unsafe to use.
We haven’t tested how many posts you can put up and how fast. That was because of the depressing results we had with Liking and Following.
DON’T EVER GET INVOLVED IN ANY KIND OF HEATED DISCUSSION!!!! If anyone reports you for hate speech – even if it is not true, you run a serious risk of losing your account in a permanent ban. That is one more thing that makes Instagram unsafe for users. If you really need to go into a debate then create a new empty account you can afford to lose.
Instagram support is a joke. It is non-existent because it is automated and the software will judge in favour of Instagram every time!!!
What if I’m reported for something – even wrongly?
No problem! You WILL most likely get banned just in case!!! We tried to report some accounts that used fake followers. They disappeared almost IMMEDIATELY.
There are thousands of people who reported they suddenly got banned out of the blue. They didn’t even post anything.
Bots on Instagram:
They can’t handle bots. Their useless sys devs have NO idea what to do. Except trying to use AI which fails utterly because they have to be taught how to spot automated behaviour and if humans can do that they can’t teach an AI to do it.
Bot behaviour: Getting 2000 followers in less than one sec should be easy to spot. I can see it and I can create software that with 100% certainty can detect this automated behaviour. It is easy, but then again – I have been a sysdev since we had punch cards. I am very experienced. The Insta devs are not.
An excerpt from PsychBreacher on Reddit:
I got threatened with being banned just because I uploaded more than 3 stories. Also, they labelled a beer photo as expressing right-wing extremist ideas, so I’m now not able to post or comment for a while. It dinged my Happy New Year’s post as inciting self-harm. It’s getting ridiculous. The app is run by fragile narcissists
I also got nudity warnings on images that didn’t even have persons in it…
Doing ads will decrease your organic reach!!!
This is crazy but we proved it is true by creating an ad that was so bad it wouldn’t attract anything. And it didn’t. And while the ad ran over two days we didn’t have one single follow and our likes dropped with 2/3…
During the campaign, we got ZERO new followers. No organic and none from the ad!
This means the Instagram bastards fool you! They steal your money!
That is seriously close to fraud!
You are better off sticking to organic reach!
Instagram Boost
Don’t ever use ads and don’t ever use Boost. It will KILL your organic reach! We tested it! All your non-boosted posts will no longer have any reach. And you won’t get any organic likes. the good thing is we got organic reach back instantly when we stopped the ads!
Commenting
Don’t post one or two-word comments. They are regarded as spam! On the other hand, long posts are likely to get flagged for hate speech because the AI doesn’t know what you are writing and probably decides they are out of context.
If you have many followers:
If you have a large following Instagram might limit the reach of your posts to prevent overwhelming your followers’ feeds.
NO! It is a blatant lie! What they don’t write is they try to force you into using ads!
Removing comments – is seriously bugged
They will randomly remove a lot of comments with the notice that you are trying to gain likes or follows in a misleading way. This part of the algorithm is ridiculously bugged. ANY comment is at risk of getting flagged by this.
My guess is it happens when their Stone Age AI can’t find a connection between the post and your comment. Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean there is no connection. But the AI is seriously dumb. But Instagram believes in it!
What ChatGPT has to say about AI:
“It’s also worth noting that while AI technologies like ChatGPT have made significant advancements, they are not without limitations and can indeed make mistakes. As with any tool, it’s important to critically evaluate its outputs and consider its limitations in context.”
But heyyy… What can I say… If Instagram acts fraudulent it is no wonder they attract scammers and people who are willing to buy fake followers and continue to maintain the deception by fooling the lowest species in the food chain. The honest people…
You can’t use an Instagram account anymore without getting flagged for something at some point. Probably falsely flagged. But flagged. And Insta doesn’t care. Sometimes you probably won’t even notice because they don’t tell you!
Considering Instagram is everything else than what they try to make us believe they are, I don’t put my eggs in that basket. I didn’t hate Instagram in the beginning but the more I found out how much they deceive us I got seriously provoked. They think I am dumb. They think I’m their slave. They insult my intelligence by pretending they are something they are not.
I simply can’t stand people who can’t be honest and have excuses for why they are allowed to deceive people.
I will leave the last wise words to ChatGPT:
If Instagram restricts your content to non-followers despite not violating their guidelines, it could be due to various factors, including:
Algorithm Misinterpretation: Sometimes, the platform’s algorithms may misinterpret certain content, leading to unintended restrictions. This could happen due to complexities in language interpretation, context understanding, or even technical glitches in the algorithm.
Technical Glitches: Instagram, like any other software platform, may encounter technical glitches or bugs that could affect content visibility or recommendation features. These glitches might be temporary and usually get resolved with updates or fixes.
User Behavior: It’s also possible that certain user behaviors or interactions with your content might trigger restrictions, even if the content itself doesn’t violate guidelines. For example, if users frequently report or flag your content, it might raise flags in Instagram’s systems.
Changes in Algorithm: Instagram frequently updates its algorithms and recommendation systems to improve user experience or address specific issues. Changes in these algorithms could sometimes lead to unintended consequences, affecting content visibility.
Policy Changes: Sometimes, Instagram may update its policies or guidelines, leading to changes in content visibility or recommendation criteria. Your content might be affected by these changes even if it was previously compliant with the guidelines.