McKenna Geer, who is a competitive rifle shooter on Team USA for the Paralympics, is the latest person to be censored on social media. In her case, the offense was merely posting pictures with the guns that she uses in competitions. While possessing a gun is a protected individual right, Instagram will flag your posts and bar you from some sites if you post a picture with a gun . . . even if it is part of your sport at the Olympics or Paralympics.
Geer posted on Instagram screenshots of Instagram’s notification that her account was now restricted.
Team USA’s website states that the wife and mother has struggled with “amyoplasia arthrogryposis in her left hand and both feet, causing her muscles not to form properly.”
Geer competed in both the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo. She won a bronze medal in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
She noted that “athletes rely on our social media accounts to spread the word about our sport, firearm safety, build our personal brand, and connect with potential sponsors. Many of us (myself included) are either not paid or paid very little for our involvement in this sport. Our social media presence can often be the avenue that pays for us to continue competing.”
In addition to flagging her posts, the Instagram notification informed her that “Your account and content won’t appear in places like Explore, Search, Suggested Users, Reels, and Feed Recommendations.”
Geer’s experience is all too familiar.
While Instagram says that she may appeal the decision, these companies make it virtually impossible to speak to anyone at the company. They do not even make press contacts public. It is often very difficult for people to figure out how to appeal and they often face a corporate brick wall unless the matter gets into the press.
In this case, Instagram wins the gold medal for censorship with its actions undermining both free speech and gun rights. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 32% of U.S. adults say they own a gun. That is over 75 million Americans. For many of those citizens, shooting is a cherished sport and passion. Yet, taking a picture with a lawful weapon can get you flagged and censored under the systems in place at sites like Instagram.
It is not clear what the company does with other images of guns like these:
I posted this story on FB and it was immediately removed for violating “community standards!”
VERY interesting Tucler Carlson interview for those who are gonna be up all night or want something interesting to read in the morning:
“Democrat says he called for Biden to quit race after president failed to recognize him”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/democrat-says-he-called-for-biden-to-quit-race-after-president-failed-to-recognize-him/ar-BB1qkr2R?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=8a835491d65f4fe98af1a5e3b27a61bb&ei=36
“Moulton was with the president at a D-Day event in Normandy, France last month. There, Biden ‘didn’t seem to recognize’ him, the lawmaker wrote in a Friday op-ed for The Boston Globe. ‘Of course, that can happen as anyone ages, but as I watched the disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I have to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem,’ Moulton wrote.”
That really isn’t fair. Even if Joetard were 40 years younger, he’s always been PLENTY stupid enough to have not recognized someone a few days after speaking with them. I don’t think there’s a medical procedure on this planet that can accurately differentiate between Joetard’s stupidity and dementia, since either will break the moronometer.
“Hillary Clinton floated as ‘mightiest of all’ Biden replacements in column, gets mocked online”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/hillary-clinton-floated-mightiest-all-biden-replacements-column-gets-mocked-online
I commented about this earlier, when the article at The Hill came out — but what the heck — the woman is a fountain of straight lines, so here’s Take Two:
“O’Hana concluded his piece, declaring, ‘The Democrats have a seasoned, savvy and adaptable candidate in Hillary Clinton. Without the burden of incumbency, she can run on a platform of stability, restoration and progress, with the credibility of her lifetime in public service and proven leadership. In her candidacy, we might just find our best chance to retain the White House and transcend the gladiatorial spectacle of politics’.”
It seems a bit early for the writer to be composing, much less delivering, this eulogy concerning The Queen Pope of the Parallel Universe (aka The Thing That Won’t Go Away), but you gotta admire his enthusiasm. Personally, though, I’ll wait until the priest drives the wooden stake through her heart, because as Yogi Berra famously said, “It’s not over ’till it’s over.”
At any rate, while gushing over the 2016 “winner” of the (imaginary) “popular vote” — which may mean something in Russia but will only buy her a cup of Starbuck’s coffee here (if she has the $8) — he forgot to mention Hillary’s best attribute — that she even manages to stay sober SOME of the time.
Hillary is an unconvicted felon, having committed the same combo of New York Penal Law 175.10 and New York Election Law 17-152 that Trump allegedly did. HRC was actually fined by the FEC for falsely labeling payments for the Steele Dossier as “Legal Services.” This was the unlawful means by which HRC and lawyer Marc Elias conspired to prevent Trump’s election. Easy as pie for the Brooklyn DA to convict them.
Hilary Clinton wants another crack at Donald. Why doesn’t this witch just get on her broom a fly away. Independent Bob.
She tried, but the broom broke. They’re only rated for carrying a maximum of 250 pounds.
Morning Joe. I was for Joe Biden before I was against Joe Biden.
I see that there’s an anonymous Anonymous who is posting that instagram is a private company and can censor who they want to. This is the same argument that Anonymous used when she said that Twitter was a private company and could censor who they wanted to. Of course this came after she was telling us that Twitter wasn’t censoring any one at all. I can’t remember what came first. Was it Twitter first or CRT not being taught in classrooms? Then again, maybe it was they’re not really reading books that show ten year old boys giving blow jobs to other ten year old boys in schools and since their not doing that we should not burn the books that are not doing that. If you are new to this blog please keep in mind this history of the grand insightful nonsense that anonymous Anonymous bestows upon us day after day after day. Just so you know where shes coming from. She thinks but not very seriously.
When you wrote “there’s an anonymous Anonymous,” it showed that you were posting drunken nonsense.
Thanks for the timely warning. It saved me from wasting time reading the rest.
Perhaps you should prioritize grammar standards over book banning in schools.
Run on sentences abound.
Instagram is a private company that can censor whatever it wants (as can twitter or FB or ..).
But Government can not ask Instagram to censor speach that is not itself criminal – as that would violate the first amendment.
Further as the Management of AHB, and Tractor Supply and Disney and CNN and … have learned – the management of a company is NOT there to impose their values on customers. It is there to make money for Shareholders, and that is accomplished by NOT pissing off customers.
There are companies that survive and Thrive by connecting their products to a specific set of values, that is quite common in niche markets.
Companies that seek to server most of the people can not afford to be project a specific set of values – not overtly, and not be censorship.
We are seeing a collapse of the traditional media – while they have managed to adapt to the digital era they have NOT made their customers happy. While all the traditional media – from Fox through MSNBC and WaPo are losing market share the largest declines by far are for outlets that censor anything that does not fit a left narative and who cheerlead for the left, and especially those that have repeatedly been caught lying.
Free markets treat censorship as damage and work arround it. The Rise of independent media is the consequence of the failure of the MSM to maintain credibility,
I am confused. Have you not heard of Hobby Lobby? My Pillow? Chick Fil A? Goya? And on the left… Patagonia?
Our nation is fiercely divided and many companies actually support shareholders by “taking a side” these days, or at least, they can make a rational case that doing so benefits the bottom line (which is all that is needed legally).
If Turley cared about free speech, he should support the free speech of corporations. If users don’t like Instagram/Meta, then choose an alternative. Fight bad corporate speech with better corporate speech, right Turkey?
Sorry. Autocorrect. TURLEY
“WATCH: Thousands of Supporters Line Up HOURS Early to See Trump and JD Vance in Grand Rapids, Michigan – Line is THREE MILES LONG!”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/watch-thousands-supporters-line-up-hours-early-see/
It reminds me of wading through the crowd to get into the 1977 Pink Floyd concert at Cleveland Municipal Stadium — estimated attendance 120,000, not counting the legion of people outside who couldn’t get in. The only difference (aside from the amount of drug use) is that for the Floyd concert, on the way in one would notice various groups of people wearing white army helmets, which seemed like an odd fashion choice for a hot summer evening.
The utility of the helmets only became apparent to those of us who’d never been to a Floyd concert before when INSIDE the stadium, where people were winging firecrackers and cherry bombs all over the place.
After last week, I would almost expect more than a few attendees at Trump rallies from now on to be wearing helmets and Kevlar vests, since I seriously doubt that democrats are done shooting at Trump yet.
MCInlyre will be along shortly to tell us its only 700 people.
Sounds like a cult eager to see the cult leader.
Facebook removed my repost of your article as well… Unbelievable.
You’re lucky that the Fraudbook clowns didn’t do to you what they did to me YEARS ago, by making up a phony phone number that I didn’t have and making it part of an access code that I was required to provide to get into my own account.
Not knowing whatever phone number it was that Fraudbook made up to pretend was my phone number, I waa thus effortlessly locked out of my own account — which was particularly odd because I didn’t even have any Fraudbook “friends” and only used the account as storage for links to articles I’d read and thought important enough for my own library of periodicals.
Guess the answer is to stick with venues, that are not restrictive of guns, athletes, Olympians, women (no matter how you define them), and handicaps. Could probably get buy with anything similar on YouTube.
Facebook/Instagram is a private company. What about this does JT not understand.
Try going into a Honda dealership and using your free speech rights to tell every customer you see about how bad a Honda is and how great a Subaru is. Stick around for 30 minutes, if you can, espousing your free speech rights about the quality of each product. Should the owner of the Honda dealership be forced to let you stay and say what you will?
That’s a false and frivolous analogy. At the Honda dealership you’d likely be escorted off the property, if not to jail, for criminal trespass.
The question is whether Instagram is more like the phone company, which has no right to moderate the content of your phone calls.
And I think you’re wrong. Instagram is private property. They have servers that store date, they have software that serves content. That is all their property, no different than the cement floor of a Honda dealership. You don’t like the analogy for your reasons, Good for you. If you want to make a web site that allows guns, go for it. How is that working out for Elon Musk and X. How does X advertising compare to Instagram or Facebook advertising? If you can do better, go for it.
The phone company ALSO has equipment and ALSO stores data. But even though people’s messages are being transmitted over the phone company’s property, the phone company cannot control the content of their telephone calls, just as people can’t show up on the phone company’s property and start hanging signs destroying the phone company’s equipment.
You need to educate yourself about the differences between private companies and public utilities.
With a phone your conversation is between you and one other person, perhaps a group. It is not for public viewing or listening, and there is not an advertisement next to a transcription of your phone call that a company is paying for.
Instagram and/or Facebook is censoring content because advertisers do not want their play dough ad next to your photo of you with a gun and a confederate flag.
Your analogy is BS.
You should go back to Russia, and take your censorwhip with you.
Meanwhile, if an advertiser doesn’t want their ad associated with something posted on Instagram, the most-obvious option is to move the ad, not remove the message.
Instagram is located in California, whose Supreme Court decided years ago that private property such as shopping centers, which had replaced the traditional town square, must open up to traditional expressive activity. Social media have similarly replaced the town square, and should similarly permit the free exercise of speech
You seem to think that because a private mass market company CAN censor that it SHOULD censor.
That is false.
Your Honda analogy proves you haven’t got a clue about rights of free speech.
You are correct that you do not have free speech in a private forum.
You are incorrect that Free speech about Honda’s and Subaru’s etc is unimportant.
Honda is one of the more popular cars because their cars are good rather than bad and because their customers excercise their free speech to say so. Honda may not want people in their showrooms bad mouthing their products – but they absolutely want people free to praise or criticixe everyone’s products – because that is good for their business.
Separately it is good for ALL of us.
We WANT the crap products to be trashed and the good ones to be praised.
Why do you think the ratings systems on Amazon, FB, Ebay, …. are so critically important ?
As to Instagram and SM more generally – their business model is to offer a forum for speech.
If they limit their market buy censoring – they harm themselves. Management runs a company at the pleasure of shareholders.
And shareholders want happy customers. – Pissing off your customers is bad business – as Disney or Anheiser Bush or Tractor Supply or ….
The reason the first amendment only applies to govenrment is because government is FORCE and is far less subject to market pressures.
I find it interesting that the left rants about democracy when the free market is the most democratic institution in existence.
When did I say they should? I never said any such thing. It’s their company, if they choose to censor its on them. If you don’t like it, get off it, make your own social media site. Learn some reading comprehension skills before you make unfounded assumptions.
“If they limit their market buy censoring – they harm themselves. Management runs a company at the pleasure of shareholders.”
Let’s put this to a test.
FB, Instagram, sensor some content. Make boatloads of money.
X claim they don’t sensor (but they do), none the less, you can find lots of BS on X. X is loosing money hand over fist.
So who exactly is censoring harming FB, Instagram, or X?
Have we forgotten how until recently the Democrats ferociously accused Trump and his followers of “insurrection” and indeed jailed American citizens because they were trying to “overturn an election”? What are the Democratic leaders doing now? They are trying to “overturn” dozens of state primaries where Joseph Robinette Biden was chosen by Democratic voters to be their Presidential candidate. How can their votes be suddenly nullified by the whims of the leaders of the Dem Party? This goes far beyond “election interference” It is the downfall of “our democracy”! Remove Adam Schiff from the ballot! Put Nancy Pelosi in jail!
Under the LAW, the difference between general elections — where office-holders are chosen — and primaries — where candidates are selected — is that primaries are essentially PRIVATE functions in which PRIVATE political parties ALLOW the public to participate — OR NOT.
Theoretically, those private political parties have no power to control who participates in a general election.
Of course, the reality is that the two major private political parties have TONS of money with which to hire lawyers and file lawsuits, and thereby use the courts to exercise control over participation in general elections — a fact that has been pointed out MANY times by Ralph Nader:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/25/ralph-nader-why-bernie-sanders-was-right-to-run-as-a-democrat/
If we believe in “democracy”, we must believe that “the people” have a role to play in selecting the candidates.
No. You seem to think the parties are government affiliated. They are not.
Your candidate can be whoever you want it to be.
So can the DNC’s.
ATS – this MIGHT be how it SHOULD be – but it is not how things are.
Primaries are subject to virtually all the same laws and procedures as the general election, they are run by the state and the same election officials. Fraud is illegal under the same laws as in the general.
In virtually all states you are free to vote in whichever parties primary you wish – at worst all you must do is change your party affilliation some number of days before the election.
People go to jail for rigging primaries.
Your argument that Primaries are somehow legally different is bogus.
State election laws are different state to state.
In manmy states the democratic candidate for President is Joe Biden – it MIGHT be possible that Biden can drop out and by replaced by Harris in those states. But replacing Biden/Harris with someone picked at the convention will result in legal battles in atleast some states.
The efforts of Democrats to change the candidate whop has overwhelming won in the primaries is election interferance.
In EXACTLY the same was as Trump trying to get congress to vote not to certify the election.
It is also LEGAL – just as Trump trying to get congress to vote not to certify the election.
Many republican primaries don’t permit registered democrats to vote in them, and many democrat primaries don’t allow registered republicans to vote in them, either. That ALONE should be sufficient to make you comprehend the differences between primary and general elections.
Think of it like two opposing football teams. The coach can yank his own quarterback out of the game and substitute someone else, but he can’t yank the OPPOSING quarterback out of the game.
It’s not a difficult concept to understand.
Primaries are run by political parties, and each party establishes its own BYLAWS, and those bylaws can be as exclusive as they want them to be while not violating LAWS, same as a country club can exclude members based upon their own decisions concerning who to include and who to exclude.
There is probably no country club on Easth that allows just anyone to show up, join, and start playing golf. That is what PUBLIC golf courses are for, NOT private country clubs.
I’ll paraphrase Lincoln AGAIN concerning your comments — “He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.” — however for you I would change the expression “smallest ideas” for “wrongest ideas.”
Instagram is private property with principles that actual Americans reject.
The owner of Instagram may allow or deny images or references to firearms and everything else it chooses, with the exception of anything that may cause property damage or bodily injury.
Americans are free to join or reject Instagram.
___________________________________________________
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
Well, Instagram is owned by a public company well-known as Facebook. This is a grey area of the debate of ownership; for example can a corporation vote or support political agenda or candidates? I believe the Supreme Court was wrong in it’s United decision, corporate interests are different than public and should be separated.
No Phil, Instagram and FB are private companies. they are owned privately.
What you are refering to is that the shares of PRIVATE ownership are traded on public stock markets according to a set of rules and regulations government their sale.
Regardless the companies are owned by shareholders just like every other company in the country regardless of how their stock is bought and sold.
“This is a grey area of the debate of ownership”
Nope either you own shares of FB and you are one of many owners or you do not. No grey area at all.
“for example can a corporation vote or support political agenda or candidates? ”
Can a coporation vote – absolutely – each and every shareholder – i.e. OWNER that is a citizen can vote.
“I believe the Supreme Court was wrong in it’s United decision”
You can beleive whatever you want – that does not make it correct.
The CU decision contra the left was based on almost 250 years of precedent.
Corporations are not people – their OWNERS are, and the OWNERS have every right as a group that they do as individuals.
Your right to free speech does not become weaker when you join with others in a protest.
“corporate interests are different than public and should be separated.”
Correct and they are. Corporations are not publicly owned, SOME corporations have their stock publicly traded.
They are still owned by shareholders – corporations are :PRIVATE entities – not public ones.
Their “interests” are decided by shareholders – not the public at large.
The phone company doesn’t own your phone calls, or have control over what you say over the phone, no matter how many people are on the other end of the line. And unless you’re plotting a murder, they have no business even listening in, much less controlling what you say or trying to apply their own interpretation to it. If Paul Revere had used Instagram to spread the word that the British were coming, we’d all be speaking with Cockney accents.
I guess no one actually went to her Instagram account. There are tons of pictures of her with firearms in them. Are we really concerned about Meta’s bots incorrectly detecting a single image?
Professor Turley, this seems like yet another post that only serves to fuel the Age of Rage that you allegedly care so deeply about.
How many of you would rather pay $$$ for an IG account to afford a bigger staff to weed out the prevalence of false positives? I’m guessing not many. Nor would this Paralympian because it would reduce her viewership on the site.
What’s the difference between one image and many? They’re still completely innocent images, that there could be no valid reason for wanting to censor.
Muck laid off about 70% of the staff of Twitter. When he bought it. Despite the tears of the left, that has not changed the value of Twitter to its users. While the left has Tried to blackmail advertisers into leaving – efforts that were successful for only a few moments.
Left wing nuts promised to leave Twitter – but few did and most of them returned.
The bottom line is that 70% of twitter employees engaged in content moderation created ZERO value
One of the reasons for the Congressional hearings on GARM and other left wing nut efforts to force censorship of SM often paid for by govenrment is that the ultimate decision belongs to shareholders – not GARM or management, and near universally shareholders decide best on the expressed wishes of customers. Twitter customers spoke – the 70% of twitter staff engaged in Censorship that Musk laid off was determined to be of no value by users. This has triggered a chain reaction – the censors in the Rest of SM are also being laid off. Because shareholders are paying for their services and Twitter proved that service has no value to users.
As is typical the left beleives that they are entitled to impose their views by force on the rest of us.
To be clear – I have no problem with SM having the power to act as they have in the past.
So long and government is not within a million miles.
I have no problems – because absent government force – markets will punish the censorious behavior of social media.
and it will all sort itself out in the end.
Sometimes that takes time.
Turley at The Hill, on Joetard trying to buy progressive support with SCOTUS term limits:
“Joe Biden sets his final price with offer to ‘limit’ the Supreme Court”
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4783017-biden-offers-supreme-court-limiting-proposal/
“The Supreme Court is just the latest political commodity. But Biden has to wonder if this is all worth the prize even if he is able to make it beyond the Democratic National Convention. Tell us this, Mr. President: When the haggling is over, what will be left of your legacy beyond your final asking price?”
To quote Jack Crabb (aka Little Big Man): “… there won’t be nothing left but a greasy spot” — that, and the indelible shame and disgrace of those that voted for him while knowing Fake President Joetard is, was, always will be, and always has been an unprincipled fraud of a human being.
Instagram is just another political arm of the Biden administration. At the RNC they spoke about the censorship and demonization of people who disagree with the Biden propaganda. If you think that I am blowing things out of proportion you should consider who they think are terrorist in America. It has to follow that terrorist must be jailed and killed if necessary. They’re in the same category as Isis aren’t they? I reiterate, of you think I am blowing things out of proportion please consider this. https://highergroundtimes.com/higher-ground/2024/jul/11/fort-liberty-does-about-face-after-identifying-pro/. Who is the existential threat to freedom? They only pulled it back after they got caught.
@Thinkitthrough
Honestly, no, this is just the depth of millennial/gen z confusion, fragility, and idiocy, and it’s a subject that still inexplicably remains taboo; enough has been written about it elsewhere. If you want to blame someone, blame the parents that raised them, and the society that decided they were happy to coddle them, and continues to, on both fronts. Many of us saw all of this coming years ago, nobody cared to listen. It’s likely too late for those generations, they will be lost generations. Everyone else can decide they want to do things differently with the kids they are raising now. Do not underestimate the impact of this.
Blame the parents who have allowed public “education” to assume an increasing number of their parental responsibilities.
Facebook is removing reposts of your article …
The shareholders of instagram and other censorious companies need to send a message to mgmt
“Your job is to make us money, not police customers expression
The shareholders should be more concerned about their children, who are not learning to socialize with other children. That is a far more critical message. I do not use Instagram, and neither do my grandchildren. I doubt any of my children use social media significantly. They are engaged in helping their children grow and their work.
S. Meyer said: “The shareholders should be more concerned about their children, who are not learning to socialize with other children.”
That is a problem, but hardly one that began with the advent of social media on the internet. It has been going on since Howdy Doody, Zorro, The Lone Ranger, and Rin-Tin-Tin were first broadcast on commercial TV at the time that school let out for the day. I will admit that this problem has increased over time, but I am not convinced that there has been any kind of dramatic knee in that curve that coincides with social media popularity. I more think it is part of an ongoing process of government convinced parent to relinquish their responsibilities and rights wrt raising their children.
“That is a problem, but hardly one that began with the advent of social media on the internet. It has been going on since Howdy Doody, Zorro,”
This anonymous post was deleted but deserves a response. Look up the research by Jonathan Haidt. We had problems with TV, but the curve radically changed for today’s young who have not yet become adults.
SM – again I agree with Haidt, At the same time while I believe he is correct – I do not KNOW it – nor does he.
Correlation is not causation.
I would further note a great deal of this is the result of something good – prosperity.
We all want our children to have better lives than we did.
And to a very large extent we succeed.
This often has GOOD and BAD consequences.
As Haidt points out – we have raised our families in radically cleaner homes than in the past.
As a result our kids have more allergies, more asthma and weaker immune systems.
Should we go back to the more polluted world that you and I grew up in ?
Childhood mortality was higher then.
More affluent – higher standard of living tends always to result in people being less resilient.
Again I have mostly made the choices Haidt would recommend for myself and my children – before I was aware of Haidts work.
I own a home – much of which I built myself – with alot of help from my family – my children.
And they will tell you in excruciating detail how their father made them haul packets of shingles up onto the roof, or dig hundreds of wheelbarrows of dirt.
But all that came with a SMALL increase in their risk of something bad. Had something happened to them – I would be beating myself up for the rest of my life. But it was a gamble with the odds heavily in my favor – and my children are better people for it.
Regardless, these are choices we must make as individuals – we can not force them on others.
With respect to myself – I agree, with respect to imposing my values by force – absolutely not.
I beleive as you that the net effect of SM especially on children is negative.
But what if I am wrong ? I and my children will pay the price. Those kids and parents that rejected my views will benefit.
I doubt I am wrong, there is lots of data that so far shows on NET SM tends to be negative in value.
But it will take a generation to know that for sure – and frankly even then we really can not know.
What you say about SM – my grandparents said about Swing and Jazz and my parents said about Rock and Roll, and many in my generation said about Rap or video games.
I think your right – But I do not have the right to Bet the rights of others against a probable net positive result.
Good morning, I’m Very interested to see an article on Instagram this morning as I just experienced this myself and at risk of becoming fodder for trolls I thought I’d share my current situation with Instagram as I know there’s more than one legal scholar commenting in here and curious on their take on it.
So here goes. I have had an Instagram account now for 5 years. I use it strictly for my work, I post no political meme’s or posts and I avoid anything really other than my tree work videos and snapshots and occasionally a video clip of my one of my dogs or cats. That’s it.
That and last year when they started with a lot of these bogus prosecutions of President Trump I posted some photographs I took of him at Arlington along with the Joint Chiefs and his immediate cabinet, Kelly Anne Conway, Rence Priebus, Mike Pompeo and Ben Carson, not sure why I posted them didn’t say anything just wrote “here are some nice pictures I took at Arlington of former President Trump” and that’s it. That’s all I wrote on it.
That was a year ago so I can’t see how that would get me flagged.
Anyway I woke up about 2 weeks ago to an email from Meta telling me my IG account was suspended for supposedly “not using my account in accordance with Instagram community guidelines” and that I could click the link if I wanted to appeal but if I did not appeal within 30 days my entire account would be deleted.
Like I said I have nothing but work videos mostly but I have some live videos I can never recover of my dogs and me at work together and riding in the truck together. So I don’t really want to lose them.
Also while I didn’t have any huge fan following or something I did have close to about 400 other professional tree cutters who followed me some that I had become long distance friends with over the years. I have no way to contact some of those guys, not that it matters that much but basically I just disappeared to them. When they go to my page they’ll think I blocked them or something the page is just gone.
Its also important to point out that I had not posted in anything in nearly a month. I had made one comment to another tree climber telling him he was “amazing” but that shouldn’t get me blocked. Other than that any saying hi to another older tree cutter who I’m friends with who commented on one of my videos that was it.
I hadn’t had any activity in other words in nearly a month, so I can’t imagine what they are claiming I supposedly did.
This was my page.
http://www.instagram.com/boomerinthetrees
So I went ahead and clicked the link for the “Appeal” they claimed to be offering me.
When I clicked the link, after first proving this this webbot running the link that “I am not a robot” by clicking on all the squares with bicycles in them (I hate that stuff, the irony of being asked by a effective robot to prove you a human are not a robot is to me Orwellianly-insane. …I know not a word but it works.
Then it demanded that I prove its me even though I had the username and password so it said I had to have the system send a code to my phone. Ok no problem, they had the right number showing so I said ok and waited for the code.
Code never arrived.
I tried again. Waited. Code never arrived.
Tried a third time, got a message stating that I can’t request another code to protect their system, and to “try again later”.
That was 2 weeks ago, and it still says that when I try 2 weeks later.
They never sent the code. Even though they have the right number, even though my phone receives text messages from Meta all the time with no problem, THIS code mysteriously never arrived. And now I can’t request a new one.
In other words they have their system set so I can’t appeal, to anyone. Not even their automated system.
And as professor Turley points out there is literally no one to call, no one to write, nothing.
I am caught in a perpetual virtual loop where the “Appeal” process won’t even start, meaning in 2 weeks 5 years worth of videos and photographs will be wiped out forever and I’ll lose contact with hundreds of people, other tree cutters who I have spoken with regularly over the past 5 years.
All because Instagram “claims” I did something wrong.
They won’t tell you what I supposedly did wrong which is insanely tyrannical. Why can’t they even tell a person what they are accusing them of, IF in fact I did break one of their rules which I am confident I did NOT.
Anyway I have decided to let them have it. In fact if there was someone I could actually speak to I’d tell them to keep it and put it where the sun don’t shine. They can have it.
But I am concerned because its META, and I also have a FB business account which I use for work, and which I have multiple customer references. In fact I get the bulk of my work off my local FB group ads.
So if they pull this stuff on me on FB, I could literally lose most of my work. I’m just a small local independent contractor, I can’t compete in advertising with big tree companies. So I rely on that account for work and for my references and losing that would be financially devastating.
Anyway if it happens, not much I can do about it obviously, that’s the point. I’m not some celebrity or professional athlete that can fight this sort of thing with lawyers. They hide behind the “this is free entertainment” claim although they know that’s no longer the case, these are local town halls where people in a local area can communicate, advertise and sell trades and services. Its more than entertainment.
Anyway I haven’t come up with any ideas should they pull this with my other Meta account but just wondering what some of the legal scholars in here would do in my situation if they used their account for work related stuff and suddenly found themselves being falsely accused of breaking some guideline without being told what guideline, without being shown any proof or evidence of this so called violation and then locked out of the appeal process by some more than mysterious technical issues, i.e texts their system supposedly sent that never seem to arrive.
What would you do?
I’m letting it go, since its IG and I don’t use it to advertise its more of a social Trade Journal for me. But curious what others who know something about the law would do.
Anyway thanks in advance to any real answers and trolls, … well, have a nice Saturday anyway.
When evaluating the behavior of a Meta service, you do need to keep the principle of Hanlon’s Razor clearly in mind. I had a very successful 38 year IT career; most of the first 25 years were spent doing software design, development, and coding. My considered opinion of those disciplines at Meta is that they don’t have a clue how to do any of that competently and professionally, and that the result is code that is effectively a steaming, stinking pile of fecal matter. I think that for the last few years, that process has come to be almost exclusively dominated by script generators and “AI”. A previous commenter claimed that censorship such as you experienced is done solely by quirky AI bots, with the implication (as I took it) that this takes the Meta human managers off the hook for it. I can agree with the first premise, but the second is very much erroneous. It was a human who decided to turn the process over to AI without human oversight or intervention.
You may be onto something there, I recall it saying something about an automated process detected something.
Whatever it is its odd they won’t text me a code to appeal after sending me an email inviting me to appeal.
Thanks for your input, I think you’re probably right.
There could be two independent coding screw-ups; there are certainly enough of those to go around. Sorry for your inconvenience. It sucks no matter where the blame lies. On multiple occasions, I have been threatened by a FB bot to have my account there suspended for 19 hours or more for such things as an innocent post on a vendor page questioning an apparent conflict between two sets of specifications given for a single product. What actually happened is that I was restricted from posting to that specific page for about 3 hours, further testifying to their incompetence.
Look for a button or a text where you can use another method to verify, like an email address.
If they present an alternate method, try that. They don’t make it obvious. Look around carefully on the pages they send you.
I had two comments that recommended that everyone find alternatives to all of the Meta social media instances removed from this comment section this morning. I’m not certain how much less inexplicable or more justifiable that is than Meta removing posted links to Turley’s column. One would hate to suspect a mendacious motive, but in the absence of a clear answer, all manner of speculation may flourish.
You used profanity and the system disallowed the comments.
Darren,
Hmmm. I support measures that you have evidently taken to restore civility to this comment section. But when you change the definition of what is going to be considered profane, it would be considerate to post a notification about it in some prominent spot (if you did this, I apologize, as I missed it). Some character substitutions in crude words that were previously allowed now seem to trigger this kind of action. There also seems to be some inconsistency: I still see a four-letter synonym for fornication with a “v” substituted for a “u” in recent posts. but my substitution of a “1” for the “i” in a four-letter synonym for excrement evidently is verboten. Oh, well, it is a lot better here than it was a month ago. Thanks for the explanation.