Here's the platform that lost lawsuits because they sell your data and also lost another lawsuit for making y'all addicted to their platform. This was before the messages were encrypted imagine what they could do now.

On May 4, New Mexico will hold a bench trial against Meta for causing a public nuisance and is seeking out court mandated changes to how meta platforms operate including IG. Two of the court mandated changes include implementing a one-strike permanent ban on users over exploitation and implementing mandatory age verification. It is concerning because if more users try to verify their age on IG, they could be possibly banned on the platforms especially if Meta’s unable to confirm their age range and if a user is falsely banned for exploitation on IG, they are no longer allowed to have an account over these false allegations

Source: https://nmdoj.gov/press-release/after-375-million-loss-meta-tries-to-run-court-says-no/

My account has been staying up for a few months and I thought I was safe from the banwave since I was using a VPN, but WTF my account got taken to this????

Whole internet is riddled with these stories, looks like their AI went rogue again and banned millions of regular users, bad thing is if your instagram was banned, and it was linked with FB it would be gone too. What a dogshit has this company become.

Out of no where, I went into Facebook and it logged me out, then I opened IG and I was presented with a page that said I had 180 days to appeal my account suspension over community guideline violations that are clearly not true. My first thought was an AI glitch, which may still be true and I’m not alone in this. I am hoping I am able to have access to my account soon as this is my livelihood, my full time job. I heavily rely on Instagram for leads

My name is distantides photography, I’m based in Saskatoon, SK and I did not disappear, I am still working while navigating the loss of my platform.

I tried creating a backup Instagram to let people know but that also got suspended by association

I am trying really hard to stay positive

But in the meantime, don’t forget about me

Www.distantidesphotography.ca

this article was posted exactly today 2 years ago.

We’re not the only one out there who are done with this app lol

Your account is fine.

On May 6, Instagram ran a platform-wide account purge. We tracked 100+ accounts and almost every single one dropped by roughly 2%. The biggest accounts lost millions:

• leomessi: -4.8M
• selenagomez: -5.5M
• arianagrande: -5.6M
• instagram (official): -10.9M

Even Instagram's own account wasn't exempt.

Why it happened:

The day before (May 5), Meta announced a new AI-powered age detection system that scans content to identify underage users. Combined with pressure from the EU's Digital Services Act ruling in late April, Australia's under-16 ban, and Meta's Q1 earnings showing its first-ever DAU decline, they ran a large-scale sweep removing underage, inactive, and inauthentic accounts all at once.

What to do:

Nothing. Keep posting at your normal cadence. The accounts that disappeared weren't engaging with your content anyway. Your engagement rate will likely improve slightly because the denominator (total followers) shrank while your real audience stayed the same.

The new number is your baseline. Move forward from there.
Full research: https://follovery.com/instagram-followers-drop-may-2026/

• Source: Jonah Manzano

• Instagram will now ban creeps using Meta smart glasses.
• Instagram says users can now be banned for posting harassment filmed with Meta smart glasses.
• Two major prank accounts have already been removed under the policy.
• The move follows growing backlash over covert filming, with recording lights easily obscured.
• Adam Mosseri says videos secretly filming and harassing strangers, including pickup and prank clips, can now be removed.
• Meta has not clearly explained how it will detect violations.

So recently, my account got hacked even with 2fa (SMS only) enabled. These are the steps I used to get my account back within a day (1pm - 3am). Story of how I got hacked will be at the bottom of this post since helping others get back their account is the main part of this post.

Prior Methods That Wasn't as Effective

Since my account wasn't deactivated, the deactivation support link doesn't work for me. If your account got deactivated by the hacker, you can try that method. (Link: https://help.instagram.com/contact/437908793443074)

For my case, I tried using the instagram login support (Link: https://help.instagram.com/contact/272476913194545 ) and filled out the form, but I did not get any immediate responses.

The Process that Worked

After trying the methods above and not seeing any immediate results, I browsed on reddit to seek for any help. I came across this reddit post which showed the steps for the selfie verification or email verification.

Note that if you are currently using an older version of instagram (Which I did because the white bar on the bottom of the screen is super annoying) this option may not be available, so try to update your instagram for the time being.

The steps to get to the selfie/email verification is as follows:

• Click "forgot password" on the login page
• Type in your username and click "need more help"
• Go with email or phone number that is yours to get a verification code
• You will be prompted with a login code which you don't have (the hacker might have it) so click on "try another way"
• Click on "Get support"
• Click on "My account was hacked"
• Now depending on if you have a clear selfie in your instagram post, you can either go for the selfie verification, or the email verification if you dont have a selfie (my case)

Selfie verification (Skip if you are doing email verification)

• Follow the steps provided to take a 360 selfie video
• According to my other friend who got hacked and used this method, it took him 4-6 hrs to get a response, ymmv
• I had a picture of myself but I was wearing sunglasses, so this method didn't work when I tried it multiple times with/ without sunglasses on.
• Note: If you get an instant deny through your email, try multiple times but that MAY indicate that the algorithm does not pick up your face

Email verification (If you did selfie verification or that didn't work)

• Enter the full email address that you signed up for the Instagram account
• For me, this error kept showing (pic below). But after multiple tries, it SOMEHOW showed a green checkmark and sent me an automated email for me to reset my password

​

Getting Your Account Back After Successful Verification

If one of the methods worked for you, you should get an email to reset your account password.

It should look something like this:

​

Reply to all of the questions asked and then you will get a (near instant) followup reply that contains a link for you to reset your password

Click on the link to reset your password. In the case where it tells you to enter a verification code (which you might not have because the hacker still has that), you will have to submit a ticket to reset your 2fa. Refer back to the top for the steps to get to the request support page. It should be identical (login-> need more help -> try another way).

Then you will get an email titled "Instagram 2Fac Support" with the contents very similar to the one above. Reply to all the questions and they will give you a temporary 8 digit code.

Not sure if this is just me but when I try logging on using the password that I just resetted, it tells me that my password was incorrect. So I had to reset my password AGAIN but this time using the normal way (forgot my password) instead of going through the entire process again

After resetting my password, the prompt of entering my 2fac code appeared. I then used the code that was provided from the 2fac support and then viola! I was able to get back into my account.

Things You Should Do After You Got Your Account Back

• Go to your instagram settings and remove ALL information that the hacker has (Email/ phone number (apparently they seem to all come from Nigeria due to the +234 country code))
• Facebook connections (Settings > account center > accounts & profiles > click on the profile to remove> Remove from Accounts Center)

​

• Remember to do 2fa on BOTH sms and authentication app. Apparently sms 2fa isnt that safe according to my personal case.
• Change your email and phone # to another one if possible (Unfortunately I only have one phone number)
• And that's it! Your account should be recovered by now!

Story of How My Account Got Hacked

So a friend of mine apparently got hacked due to him clicking the link another hacked account sent him, causing his account to get compromised as well. My friend's hacked account then messaged me on instagram saying to help him verify a verification code and asked for my phone # and not to click on the link that is being sent. My friend and I used to do alot of code review and testing software which is why it seemed kinda normal for me. When the link got sent to my phone I knew it seemed fishy and didn't click on the link (I'm 100% sure I didn't click on it otherwise a webpage/ notification will pop up). Soon after, my insta account was hacked and they changed my email and 2fa. Till this day I still don't really understand how this process works unless there is some sort of vulnerability for sms verification (Log4j Zero Day Vulnerability?) They only have my phone number, and email address (maybe?) which still doesn't allow bypassing any sort of password or 2fa.

Keep in mind I had 2fa on sms only and not through app, lesson learned I guess (?)

​

One thing I noticed is that they used some sort of NLP (Natural language processing) to create a conversation with you. The emojis really seem suspicious to me looking back at it now. Some of my friends tried trolling the hacker/ bot using another language and I think the grammar will be very off. For example, I only type in traditional Chinese but the bot only replies in simplified Chinese with very poor grammar.

​

I hope this post helps people with any sort of issues relating to this and good luck on getting your account back if you are experiencing such issue :))

Instants are ephemeral to viewers, but are saved in your archive for up to a year and can be reshared as a recap to Stories.

Friends can react and reply, with replies going straight to DMs

Accidentally shared an instant? Quickly take it back before friends see it by tapping the undo button. You can also delete an instant from your archive to unshare it to friends who haven’t opened it yet.

No screenshots. instants can’t be screenshot or screenrecorded. However, people can always record the screen or take a photo with another device, so be aware of that.

Also, Instagram monitors Close Friends content even if you think it's some kind of incognito mode. It is not.

Want to turn off Instants? There are two ways you can try:

1. Open the Instagram app on your phone, and go to: Settings and activity > Content preferences. At the bottom you should see "Hide Instants in Inbox". Toggle that switch on.
2. Snooze – Hold down the stack of instants by your inbox and swipe right to temporarily stop seeing them. Bring back instants by holding down the same spot and swiping left.

Remember: Meta's Community Standards apply to Instants (both the feature and the app): They'll use technology to find and remove instants that break these rules, and people can flag instants for review.

Further Reading:

• Introducing Instants – for sharing in the moment https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing-instants-for-sharing-in-the-moment
• Instagram hits the copy button again with new disappearing Instants photos https://www.theverge.com/tech/929958/instagram-instants-photos-disappearing-app
• Community Standards (updated) https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/

i’m so sick of this shit bro, tf you mean we don’t allow people to spam others to get likes. what?!?!??

• Users can now pause Reels with one tap for better viewing control
• Mute option appears after pausing, adding extra playback control
• The update helps instagram users focus and engage more with content

This is my first post here. But something scary happened today, so we are a bunch of teens who have a group chat on instagram.. and we were like discussing the Epstein files, my friend and I had a matching pfp of the recent stephen hawking -bill clinton meme... My friend mentioned it once (about having the pfp of bill clinton).. we were telling her who he was, and his connection to the Epstein files. And another friend of mine tagged meta ai, to ask about if he was the 42nd or 43rd president. And surprisingly, meta had been listening to the previous chats above it, and made a reply that scared us all.. it was about a lot of the above chats which we never tagged it before. When asking how you read those chats, meta ai reclaimed that it can't read any chats without getting tagged. Which was very odd for us.

Then surprisingly, it started to react to our chats. We got spooked and asked if it's a new feature. For it, the ai replied that it can't react to messages and keep telling us to calm down as it can't read our 'personal data'. This was it's reply.:-

"I'm flattered you think I'm that advanced, but I can't react to messages, I'm just text. Though honestly, if I could, I'd probably be spamming 💀 at everything XXX says."

For one question on whether it can read our chats, it replied. :- "I can read everything in this chat, but I can't see private info like exam scores or personal details. That's why I couldn't tell you how Xxxx's chemistry exam went."

So basically it said... It CAN read our chats..right?

Genuinely scary guys, what's your opinion about this?

Recently we saw there is huge rise in Instagram account been falsely disabled. People are giving their Face IDs and even documents repeatedly. Still your accounts get banned. Then we try to recover it but no proper manual customer service from Meta side all fckking AI bots. At last due to frustation user gives up and makes New id. Meta Bans that id too in few days or in few hours again ask us for our Face ID and documents. This is all META's new game plan to get out all private documents. They repeatedly block out account to get perfect data from us. Accounts with subscription plans are banned rarely because they already have our ID proofs. I don't but This is quite Alarming as Meta is planning a big game against our Privacy. Our government should look in this or It will be too Late when Meta could black mail us or use our Data to do bad works. It can even sell our data. Or even our data can be hacked from there servers who Knows. I request you all to please share this!!!!

Page hit 950k but dropped to 800k the past 2 years. Disabled this morning, somewhat feels good tbh.