Someone impersonated me on Instagram (and my account was disabled?!!)
Dear Instagram:
How could you do this to me?
I know you have a lot going on, what with shakeups and layoffs in the Meta world, but seriously — you disable my account when I diligently report another account impersonating me? My millennial daughter tells me it’s not personaI, it happens more than I’d like to think. She does her best to soothe my indignation, tells me I’m not missing much.
Okay maybe she’s right. (Never mind the joyful videos she had to tell me about in the days after the midterm elections). Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. But I’m still mad as hell.
Can you hear me, Instagram? Are you even listening?
I did everything right. I reported the fake account, gave all the information you requested to prove I am who I say I am: email address, phone number, photo ID.
I had every reason to expect I’d hear back within 48 hours.
Weeks passed. I tried following up via email.
No response.
The clear-thinking part of me recognizes that I’m just one of too many innocent — yes, innocent — Instagram users banging their heads against an invisible wall controlled by the technological beast that doesn’t see me at all.
Then I lose it — the clear thinking dissolves, the irony and humor become no match for the indignity and violation. Someone with too much time on her hands has copied my profile photo and a few other details that make it look like this is really me. She sends messsages to people already following me.
Alert! Alert!
When all is said and done, it is personal. It’s me. Little ole’ me whose account you mistakenly disabled. This is not very discerning of you, putting me in the same banned wagon as high-profile individuals (no need to name names) who share very nasty things on social media.
For the record, it happened to me a while back on Facebook too. Am I such an appealing target? I got texts and direct messages from friends who thought my account was hacked. It’s not really hacking, fortunately, but it’s no less annoying. I took a close look at the cloned profile photo of me, noticed an animated little butterfly in the corner. I alerted Facebook friends via a post to ignore any new friend request from me.
Facebook responded quickly and efficiently. My clone’s account disappeared.
Reaching out to Facebook this time around to fix what you don’t seem able to do, dear Instagram, had me feeling hopeful when I got an email confirmation that my situation would be looked into.
That was weeks ago. I sent another email, and another.
So what’s the problem, dear Instagram? How long do you plan to keep me hanging like this?
Or have I disappeared into some techno-netherworld, a limbo land of lost and/or dismissed identities?
As it is, Twitter lost a lot of luster for me even before Elon Musk made it his own. And I have yet to recover from the nervous wreck Facebook turned me into when a man with orange hair insinuated himself into my newsfeed. Family feuds got really ugly. Sometimes I would close my eyes, let me fingers do the scrolling, turn my newsfeed into a roulette-like game of chance, play blindly to see what I’d land on when I opened my eyes.
No matter how I played, the algorithm messed with my head. I became scarce in the Facebook town square, an intermittent visitor checking up on friends, leaving my digital footprint with poetry and music links, posts about writers and artists/movies and TV shows, essays that demand to be shared for the lift or laughter they bring to my day. Even if I can’t quite cut the chord (frayed as it is) that lures me to the square, I can say that the less time spent on Facebook, the better it is for my well-being.
All of which makes me count on you, Instagram, to keep my FOMO at bay. I need my daily dose of puppies doing silly things, trending books, photos of friends in exotic places. And let’s not forget early dibs on sale items from brands I covet.
Please oh please oh please just let me back in. Look at my profile photo. Is that the face of someone who would violate community standards?
Lest I get too grandiose, let’s just say that if/when you answer my pleas and welcome me back, it’s likely I’ll consider it a fresh start, change my handle to Josefa K., homage to my Kafka-esque trial by technology.
If nothing else, I’ll prove to friends who may (or may never) have realized I was gone that I do in fact exist.
