18 Days Later. Instagram Unlocks My Account.

It took 18 days. Instagram locked me out of my account on November 2nd and it took 18 days for them to let me back into my own account. I needed to wait a few days to write this because it is absolutely beyond me that any company or social media platform has this type of power. No explanation, No reason, they just locked me out.

For 18 days, I emailed Instagram and Facebook (who owns Instagram), I live chatted with Facebook Concierge, I even got someone from Facebook on the phone. I did this every single day, not one person was able to help. All they kept saying is your account was disabled, our internal team needs to look at it, your are in the “cue”, it should be soon. In the end “soon” meant 18 days.

Can you imagine if this was my full time job? Can you imagine how detrimental this would be to someone who makes a living doing this? It remains such a sore point for me.

When my account was finally unlocked. No one reached out to me to tell me, I heard about it from one of my followers. I was obviously so excited. Excited to have my community back, excited to know all the time and money I had invested into this amazing community had not been wasted. So excited to speak to everyone again.

When I asked Instagram what happened, do you know what their response was? We cannot provide details on why this happened. So, do you know what I am thinking now? This could happen anytime for any reason. That is just unacceptable to me. How can a company have this much power? If they feel like I’ve done something wrong and need to lock me out, should they not validate the concern first?

I love the Instagram platform, I really do. But I need to make sure I can communicate with my community directly if this were to happen again. I need to protect myself.

SO! If you haven’t already sign up for my newsletter. Tap the link in my Instagram profile and select Sign Up for My Newsletter, leave me your name and email. I promise not to spam you, I send one email a month, that’s it. BUT, should this happen again, I will have a way to communicate with all of you.

Terri xo