What to do when your Instagram account is disabled without having violated their policies?

May 18, 2021 7 min read

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Lately I have seen through networks how many Instagram users complained because their accounts have been closed for no apparent reason. It even became a Trending Topic on Twitter with the hashtag #instagramdisabled .

The reason for this disagreement is due to the lack of information from the platform. Users feel unprotected and don’t know what to do to get their accounts back.

In addition, to this discomfort on the part of the users, is added the fact that, although it was an error on the part of the platform, no one guarantees that you can recover it. I know, this is very frustrating for many who have spent years working on their branding and investing their time and money on Instagram or Facebook .

To help you with this problem, below, I will tell you what are the main reasons why your account can be disabled and what to do when it is closed. In addition to leaving you the official links, I will teach you a trick that worked for me personally and for which, thanks to him, I still maintain one of my business accounts and I did not have to start from scratch.

Reasons why Instagram can suspend your account

Failure to comply with some of these community rules may lead to the deactivation of your account. By way of summary, these are the ones that I highlight:

• Do not upload photos that are not yours and that are copyrighted.
• It complies with the law, since Instagram does not accept activities or people that support terrorism, the sale of firearms, the purchase or sale of drugs, etc.
• Do not upload humiliating, threatening, hateful or any other content that encourages racism or violence.
• Don’t do or encourage spam. Avoid growing your posts artificially, do not post repetitive comments or repeatedly contact people for commercial purposes without their consent.
• Warn in the caption if you are going to share some explicit content that some of your followers do not want to see because they are harsh.

On the other hand, it is true that in recent months there has been an increase in false accounts on the networks and this has made the platforms adopt a stricter role in terms of their policies. However, sometimes, these platforms are also wrong, since they make use of automation and artificial intelligence to detect these problems. Because of this, accounts are sometimes disabled and locked by mistake.

Other times, the cancellation or blocking of accounts depends on a group of moderators, who either act on their own or due to complaints received from other Instagram users.

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^{Image: Gabrielle Henderson via Unsplash}

Why does IG disable your account if you don’t violate any of the community rules mentioned above?

This is something that happened to me a few months ago with one of my professional accounts. And now it has also happened to some of my fellow entrepreneurs. Fortunately, I was able to get my account back, but others have not and had to start over.

This is the case of a friend, who senses that her account was closed for receiving complaints, in a massive way, from other accounts. The only thing he did was give his opinion on certain topics, related to his sector; issues that apparently were not of interest to some large accounts. But at no time did he violate any policy.

In fact, and it is not the first time I have heard it, years ago there were Facebook groups that had the mission of “recruiting” users and they agreed to massively denounce certain pages. In this way, the Instagram moderators considered, based on these complaints, that that account was not complying with some of its policies.

Fortunately, these groups have already closed them. But it makes me reflect on the existence of bad practices and how far many are capable of going.
Steps to follow to recover your account

Once your account is suspended, no one guarantees that you will get it back, even if it’s a mistake. However, I recommend that you follow these steps, which worked for me:

1. Complete this form on Instagram
Fill in this form that you find within the platform. This should be filled out if you think your account has been disabled by mistake, so that they can investigate the case.
Among the information requested by the form is your full name, your email, username, telephone number and the reason why you are appealing the decision to permanently deactivate the account.

Note: submit only one form. After sending it, you will have to wait between 24 and 48 hours. But if you submit multiple appeal forms during this time, this will further delay the process.

2. Go to Facebook Business Support
Now comes this other step, the one that “saved my life.” But this will be useful if you have an ad account in Business Manager, as they will ask for your Facebook Business ID, which is a unique identification number.

Through this medium, Facebook Business Support , I was able to speak directly with an agent, where I had the opportunity to explain what had happened and why I considered it a mistake.

Here I recommend that you try by all means to show your interest in speaking with an agent. This way you make sure someone reviews the case.

If you can talk to someone in Facebook support, you’ll be one step closer to getting your account back. You will be able to connect with that person, explaining that you never intended to violate the policies and that you have always taken actions to grow your account naturally.

Also, take the opportunity to tell your story and see reflected in your message all the effort that it has cost you as an entrepreneur to build that community and work on your personal brand.

Finally, something that helped me a lot is Reddit, where a very interesting conversation thread has been created on this topic. You can take a look here .

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