Creatives love and hate Instagram. While everyone is on it, very few enjoy being there. The platform is constantly changing the way it prioritizes work, as well as banning creatives without any reason. I was one of the unlucky many to experience such a ban. It was worse than I thought. Waking up in the morning ready to start a new day, I sat down for breakfast and opened Instagram. It froze, and then said, “account deactivated”. Devastated, I went online to search for solutions. My day was ruined and I really felt like I lost a limb. The size of the tragedy was off the scale.
Shameless plug of @illyaovcharphoto
You may say, “He is just so Gen-Z, I use MySpace and ModelMayhem for work”, and good for you! I use Instagram, although to be frank, I wouldn’t be using it if I didn’t have to. Scrolling Instagram in the morning is not the habit I’m particularly proud of, but I am used to checking what Vogue is up to, what new images my retoucher made, as well as catching up with any work-related messages.
Being unable to do work via Instagram was a loss. If you’re so inclined to know I spend more time looking at Vogue Runway app to see what’s fashion up to than scrolling through memes on Instagram. I did however recently start checking Facebook for Fstoppers memes, which are hilarious.
Long story short, I got unbanned. But I learned a lot during the 7 devastating Instagram-free days. Here are some things that I strongly urge you to do. I never thought I would be banned until I woke up and was.
Lesson 1: Having Multiple Ways to Contact People
As mentioned already, I use Instagram for work. So do most creatives. Even the old-school folks who were popular in the 70s and 80s have Instagram by now. It is fairly easy to find a creative using Instagram. I found crew for my first ever photoshoot on there. Why bother with finding out people's info if you can just look them up on Instagram and slide into the DMs. 
Having established a good network there, I constantly relied on it to get new work. There were very few phone numbers I collected, mainly Instagram tags. This created a bubble waiting to burst. As the network grew, it became more valuable. As I got banned, I lost it all.
Thank god, I had a few good friends who knew everyone in the industry in the city. Side note: you must know super-connectors, they will save your life. I called them immediately and asked for the phone numbers of the people I was going to shoot with. A dozen calls with an embarrassing “I got banned” followed. 
What I learned from this experience was that you should never ever keep your eggs in one basket. The safest way to keep a good network is by using a database, or just the contacts app on your phone. Assuming your phone is backed up, you are a lot less likely to lose the information. Whenever you work with someone new, ask for their number, Instagram, email, and any other info they’re happy to give. Record it, save it, and don’t rely on an Instagram tag.
Lesson 2: Not Relying on One Platform to Showcase Work and Reach an Audience
Simply looking at reach, Instagram is the biggest of them all. It is free as well. Sure, I can put up billboards with my images around the city and have more reach, but that would cost a fortune. Instagram ads are the same, although they increase reach, I need to pay for them.
When I lost Instagram, it lost the audience it had. Although I haven’t amassed a massive following on it, it is a following of people who hire me. Not having the ability to put my stuff in front of people who want to buy it was a huge loss as well. I didn’t have any other way to do it either. 
The lesson I learned is that there should be a backup way to reach some people as far as showcasing work goes. One of the best and easiest ways to do it is by having a mailing list. I have started manually adding emails to a mailing list and sending out a quarterly emailer. You should find an alternative way to show your work to an audience.
There is an illyaovchar.com website that you can find and browse, but it is designed to be a portfolio, not a feed of new images, therefore it won’t be a good way to reach an audience. Also, photographer websites are generally not visited regularly, so it won’t replace a mailing list or Instagram.
The Good Side to Being Banned
There was a good side to this hiatus from Instagram. It let me rethink how I market my work, as well as create backups for reaching my clients and creative network. It also allowed me to compose this article, which, hopefully, is a valuable lesson for the dear reader. 
On a personal note, not having Instagram let me change from texting to ringing people up. It seems like now with the comfort of texts, few bother to call, which is a shame as I noticed. I am now all for calling and not texting. Calling takes less time, and also allows having a proper conversation. While I sound old-fashioned, I appreciate the alive quickfire dialogue that ringing people up provides. Just one note on etiquette, always give people a way out of a call by starting the conversation with “can you talk now?”. The better you are, the more people pick up. In a way, it’s a measure of how respected you are among your colleagues.
Overall
Overall, being banned from Instagram, albeit temporarily, changed the way I work with people. I am grateful to whoever made the choice to ban me on Instagram, you helped me spend less time on your platform and rely on more effective and better methods of reaching the people I need. Writing this article, I strongly suggest following the advice in it. It’s like having a backup drive: you think it won’t happen to you until it does.
Good article with relevant insights and tips. Thanks!
Of course, the main thing I kept thinking about the whole time I was reading your article is, "What did he get banned for?"
I know you said that it was "for no reason", but Instagram must have had a reason, even if it wasn't a viable reason, or if it didn't make any sense. I'm sure you have some idea of what they banned you for, even if the reason was not true, such as somebody reporting you for something you didn't say or post. I mean, you could post a photo of a landscape with no people init, and someone could "REPORT" the post as being pornographic, and they could ban you based on that report, even if the report was completely false.
I just really, really want to know what they said they banned you for. You just can't write an article like this without everyone reading it being 100% focused on WHY you got banned. That's just what people are mostly interested in. We want to know the why even more than we want to hear about the other insights and recommendations.
I am also curious as well about what their reason was.
Answer below!
Instagram went through a phase where they attacked photographers/editors and models. They claimed that they were removing problematic accounts that glorified photoshop claiming it fuild unrealistic body expextations. So, that could very easily have been what he got banned for.
As for you saying
"I just really, really want to know what they said they banned you for. You just can't write an article like this without everyone reading it being 100% focused on WHY you got banned."
Dont speak for others. I was not at all curious abour that. I was enjoing the experience convayed. To me, you come off as someone who is perjecting their Instagram behaviours.
"Given the media/thought-control/social justice/majoritarian climate today,"
You gotta be kidding!
Dear Tom, please find the answer below :)
I know some folks have backup accounts just in case.
And, as far as keeping contacts info, something like Contacts list from Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc. This way, it's separate from IG (or any social media), easily accessible, and it doesn't matter if you switch phones brands.
A backup account would be great insurance for an unexpected ban. Thanks for the idea.
If you don't like Instagram, and aren't "particularly proud" of looking at it, it's your own fault for not putting the time into seeing only what you want to see. A couple of years ago, I only followed and saw posts (other than sponsored) of film photography. It was great. Now, I'm following more high altitude "landscape" photography, mostly from the Himalayas and Karakorum. Yes, it takes time to unfollow stuff you're tired of, and research how to follow new things. But it's 100% doable to wake up to photos you DO want to see. You just have to actually want it.
Truth is, I follow accounts that I want to follow or have to follow. I'm not interested in all of the stuff I see on there, and I do all I can to look beyond photography. Still, I use it to keep up with what people are up to. It helped me be part of the community.
Instagram became irrelevant when Facebook got involved, your feed went from your choices to their choices.
Instagram doesn't work that way for me. My feed is 100% comprised of people that I follow (except for the occasional sponsored post).
It is surprising that you are getting things in your feed from anyone that you don't follow. That just doesn't happen to me. Wonder why your feed, and therefore your experience, is so different than mine.
That's not how it works at all. Aside from sponsored posts, your feed is only what you choose to follow. If you don't follow anyone (or any hashtag), I don't think much of anything at all would show in your feed.
If there's a will, there's a way. There's this Chrome extension, "Oh My IG", that gives you options on how you want your feed. Looks like it's been around since 2016. I just discovered it 2 months ago. Best thing is I don't have to log in directly into the extension. It is just reorganizing the page layout.
The main things I used it for is having a chorological feed and setting the columns to 2 (instead of 1). The columns can be set to almost any value. IG is bearable again.
Why was I banned?
Truth is, I don't know exactly.
Here is what Facebook wrote to me:
You can't attempt to create accounts or access or collect information in unauthorized ways.
This includes creating accounts or collecting information in an automated way without our express permission.
And based on your account’s recent activity, our systems have detected behavior that violates one or more of our policies.
As far as I know, I never did any of those things. I only tried using a third-party scheduler once, a long time before the ban.
To add to this, I never use Instagram for anything beyond my photography, the message of the latter is "hey I think this looks nice".
Thanks for posting the explanation - it's a good reminder that platforms like IG and FB are there to collect data for their own benefit - not those of the professionals on the platform. It gives the article even more weight - connections should be under YOUR control, not the platform.
Thank you for the explanation. Now my incurable curiosity is satisfied! Much appreciated!
Illya who at Facebook/ Meta did you speak to for the unban?
No clue, Barry. For all I know it was a service support agent. Sorry.
This random account deactivated/ disabled situation has been going on since late last year. There is some relationship with the face scanning ID verification measures and full browser support Instagram attempted to implement around that time. That ID verification effort failed when users were scanning toys to bypass the scan verification. Instagram stopped the face scanning and just arbitrarily started halting accounts with an enhanced enforcement AI. Around this time, Instagram provided full browser support. Herein lies a problem. If you browse multiple profiles in different tabs, this appears to Instagram as you are signed multiple times. The bans in this method never states what you were actually banned for.
They suggest you "may" be able to get your account back. However, attempting to do so won't yield any positive results. Within a day, you'll be presented with a generic support email. The support email bot will eventually ask for a photo of you holding a code they send via email. The problem is after that, you won't hear back. Instagram doesn't have any human support, unless you are blue check marked/ Kardashian level/ or resources to have the story to show up on news sites. Along with this ban, any devices and IPs you've used are also banned. If you attempt to make another account, you're banned before you finish creating it. There's a mega-thread on r/Instagram. There is a hashtag on Twitter #instagramdisabled where people have been waiting months for a reply from Instagram. People are getting nuked by Instagram's bot and there's no recourse. I tried tweeting to some tech news sites, but no one has really picked up on it. This is a problem. I was actually surprised to see this covered here.
Facebook's focus now is the Metaverse and Tiktok/ Reels. Both futile measures. The Metaverse is pointless. It's Playstation Home/ Second Life/ VR Chat, but now with NFTs. Going up against Tiktok to essentially recreate Vine is hilarious. Facebook can't intimidate Tiktok, nor can they be bought. The past times Facebook had competition, they bought Instagram because it posed a threat. Then they leveraged Instagram to slow Snapchat by mimicking features.
--- "The support email bot will eventually ask for a photo of you holding a code they send via email. The problem is after that, you won't hear back."
That's actually false. I have had to do that and I got an email from them a couple of days later letting me know my account is active again.
Since end of Nov 2020 up to Mar 2021, my account was continually getting the "suspicious activity" warning and they'd make me change my password. I've changed it dozens of times. On average, about every 3 days. Sometimes, multiple times a day. Eventually, they deactivated my account and I filled in that appeals form where they email you with a code and you have email back a photo of yourself holding the code written on a piece of paper. They re-activated my account.
Jun 2021, I've had to reset my password twice.
Sep 2021, I think this is when I had to do the face id thing.
Mid Dec 2021 to current, they would log me out of all devices and I'd have to log back in. This has happened 5 times so far. At least they are not making me change my password.
With that said, I do use IG mostly on my computers (desktop and laptop). Been doing this since 2015/2016. I use multiple browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Edge). My desktop is on VPN.
Recently, I've started a test where I only use Edge on my desktop to log in to see how long I can go without being logged out and forced to log back in.
You can read people's experiences here
https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/r4bkfz/account_deleteddisabl...
"these apps are only created to...market dumb shit to you that you don't really need .."
But that's exactly what a lot of photographers aspire to do with their photography: help market "shit" that people don't need, by getting paid to take photos of it.
We need a post now on how you got UNbanned as this has happened to a few photographer friends of mine
Pondering a "how to get yourself unbanned in 1 easy step" The answer is simple: harass them until they unban you. Not sure I see how I can stretch that thought to 1000+ words.
Technically, you can't. The support form will throttle you and you won't be able to submit. Early in December, people were paying $5 for Facebook ads, which get you live support. Some people were able to get their accounts unlocked that way. However, there's been a Facebook support policy instituted preventing agents from helping users. For most experiences once you submit the unlock request, you'll never hear back from Instagram.
Here's another recent article about this
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouver-plus-size-model-loses...
Unfortunately it doesn't always work this way. I know several people who were banned for this very reason (in fact, no actual reason named) and they have been emailing facebook for several weeks with no success. One of the accounts was a local coffee shop account and another one belong to the amateur photographer who mostly shared their Photoworks' before and afters. Both had to create new accounts AND look for other ways to contact their audience during this downtime, so thinking about backup sources is very important.
Yeah, I had to harass them 5-6 times on the form, and then go harass facebook ads support.
I would never work with someone without having their phone number and email. That is just insane to me, and what you had to learn the hard way. And someone who keeps a contact list is not a "super-connector". They are just a normal, organized person with professional business practices.
You are absolutely correct. It would be very odd and exceptional behavior for any photographer NOT to have a complete email and phone number list of all the people that they work with. Keeping such a list is what every single human does. NOBODY just refers to Instagram whenever they need to contact someone who they're working with or who is involved in a project. I'm afraid that the author of this article may have built a bit of a straw man by inferring that some people don't keep email addresses and phone numbers, because literally every human who works in any kind of professional capacity does this.