[aurareturn]

Also, never ever use a VPN and log in with your Instagram account on the web. They're highly likely to flag you as spam immediately even if your account is 10 years old and legitimate.

You then will have to go through a process to remove the flag by taking a selfie with a paper written with some date and user name. Not guaranteed you'll get your account back.

This happened a few times to my account. On the last time it happened, I had to ask my friend who works at Meta to file an internal ticket to try to get my account back.

Meta's antispam seriously sucks. It's so primitive and so easy for a real user to get flagged.

[qingcharles]

I had an account in 2023 and it one day asked me to upload the selfie with the paper. Literally the second I hit submit it returned within a microsecond to say I was now permanently banned.

I was tempted to pay a Meta employee with this one, but the going rate is about $500-2000 right now. And it's too late because I took the gamble of trying to appeal it. Once you appeal and lose Meta employees can just use the internal ticket system to get it back. It's a more convoluted process and usually they want $5-10K to do it at that point.

[grishka]

Instagram is blocked in Russia so everyone here uses it through some sort of VPN. No one I know has ever got banned for that.

[thrdbndndn]

I lost my 10 years old account this way after being flagged about 2-3 times due to travel.

My account really isn't that important but still makes my blood boil at the time.