Skip to content
Account Ban Help

Random restore after 164 days. I didn't do anything new

1,150 views

Some of you know me from the comments here. My Instagram was disabled on 19 January for 'account integrity' (associated with another account, apparently). Appeal rejected 2 days later. Did a subject access request in the spring, got my data. Today, 2 July, it was just back. 164 days. No email, no notification. I hadn't done anything new in weeks, I'd basically moved on. I'm posting because I see a lot of 'day 60, I give up' posts and I want people to know random restores do happen, months later. I don't know why. Nobody here knows why. But it happens. What I'm doing now: 2FA with an authenticator app, a fresh backup, and I removed the phone number my partner and I shared for years from his account in the same Accounts Center. I wonder if that was the 'association'. Also, for the nerds: the Oversight Board decided its first disabled-account case last month. They upheld that ban, but they said Meta should tell people which rule was broken, what the penalty is and whether automation was involved. Won't help any of us directly but nice to see someone say it officially.
Edit

4 comments

  1. Emma!! Brilliant news. You've helped half this board, well deserved.
  2. ok this actually gives me hope. almost a year for me and I still haven't deleted the app
  3. Can people use the Oversight Board for their own disabled account?
    1. @Anonymous from their FAQ, you need an active account you can still log in to, plus the reference number from Meta's appeal. So for most of us with fully disabled accounts, sadly no.

Write a comment

Needed to delete the comment (6 or more characters; easy ones such as 123456 are not accepted).

Do not include other people’s personal information, login codes or passwords.