instagram fucked me up big time when they all of a sudden deleted my account end of January 2019. Out of the blue, they erased all my photographs, changed the password and therefore banned me from the platform. I contacted the support through various ways. A big thanks to everyone who came up with ideas on how to reach them. Because instagram does not want to get contacted. They hide their support pages as good as they can. They replied to my requests four times, but all of those replies were automatically generated emails linking to their terms and conditions only. No reason given why they (accidentally) removed my account. No steps taken by them to re-activate it, either.
I would like to point out that all the photos I uploaded on instagram had always been censored. Not like on my own website. On instagram I was extremely careful and always posted the least daring pictures, censored with black bars. All my posts were fully conform with their (uptight) guidelines.
Maybe it was artificial intelligence giving me minus scores. Maybe someone of their remote staff in the Philippines hit the wrong button when cleaning up the system. I will never find out.
I promise, I was very disappointed for one week, but then I decided to take a time off from social media. Those were great four weeks. I had so much more free time, was more creative and it felt really good mentally.
Joy of Missing Out: Enjoying life in the here and now and not on social media broadcasting or seeing what everybody else is doing.
But I knew that I would have to make a new account one day. Unfortunately, instagram is the place to be for models, so I need to be present there, too. I decided not to care about the numbers of followers anymore and I won't spend more than 15 minutes per day with the app. But, as I am constantly searching new models to work with, I am back. Not so thrilled. But still back. This is my new account: @simonbolzphoto.
