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Instagram

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See also: Facebook

🌐️📸️🇮 Former Instagram usage information for @seanpm2001

Former Instagram usage

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Instagram logo (2016) when I was briefly a user

I only used Instagram for 1 day, playing with filters, then just completely abandoning it. I just applied some filters to my old YouTube channel logo, and somehow received over 100 followers for this. I didn't have much interest in the platform, and left after doing this.

• Link to my account dead link, account suspended

Suspension (2023, August 11th)

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As part of my Takeout Tuesdays project, I went to do a data takeout of my Instagram account. This takeout was successful, and I kept 2 pinned tabs open for a few days afterwards. 4 days after the takeout, on 2023, Friday, August 11th, I was cleaning up tabs, and I found this:

I thought this was a joke, so I reloaded the page. It is official, they sent me an email too. The weird thing is, I did absolutely nothing wrong, I used the data takeout tool that they developed, through the Instagram website itself! if Instagram is a 3rd party tool, then Instagram itself is a violation of Instagrams Terms of Service.

Personally, I am happy with this. I have been wanting to completely remove my presence on Facebook platforms for a while now, and this account was completely dormant for over 5 years prior to this data takeout. Since I have a complete copy of the entire account, and that the account was suspended before I could go and delete it, Facebook has helped me get rid of my Instagram presence. My plan was to let it play out on its own, and unlike Twitter, this service has suspended my account within 5 days.

I don't want to be on a platform where users are valued this little. Facebook has harvested (and even sold) user data in much more illicit ways than any of its users (except for Google, and a few others) so they don't really have the right to say this without looking like a complete idiot. It appears that Facebook prefers bots over users, so this is fine. This only increases the percentage of Instagrams bot userbase.

I also faked my age. My DoB is already public, but I was not willing to directly give it to Facebook in this way. Almost everybody fakes it anyways, so it doesn't really matter what you enter. I entered 1970/01/01

I spent way too much time documenting this meme as well. If you want, you can read more about it here and also here.

This, however, isn't related to the ban, as they said nothing in the suspension notice about giving a fake date of birth. Even then, it would further confirm the illegal data harvesting they do on their users and non-users if this was stated.

About the appeal process, I updated this document twice yesterday, and both times forgot to mention this: I am not going to even attempt to appeal, as it simply isn't worth my time. Talking to a bot about what a bot said you did wrong is going to go nowhere. It isn't going to change its mind.

I am updating this file extensively, as I now plan to combat Facebook more publicly, and this is my staging ground for starting to do so.

Account data

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I am still working on scrubbing the data of sensitive information, it may take months, it may take years (I am not spending that much time on this project) Data for my Instagram account will nonetheless be made public eventually. Once ready, it will be available here.

• HTML data
• JSON data

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File info

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File type: Markdown (*.md *.mkd *.mdown *.markdown)

File version: 4 (2023, Saturday, August 12th at 06:58 pm PST)

Line count (including blank lines and compiler line): 215

Word count: 1,610

Character count (including spaces): 9,807

Character count (excluding spaces): 8,314

Size (in bytes): 9,830

Current article language: English (EN_USA) / Markdown (CommonMark) / HTML5 (HyperText Markup Language 5.3)

Encoding: UTF-8 (Emoji 12.0 or higher recommended)

All times are UTC-7 (PDT/Pacific Time) (Please also account for DST (Daylight Savings Time) for older/newer entries up until it is abolished/no longer followed)

Note On 2022, Sunday, March 13th at 2:00 am PST, the time jumped ahead 1 hour to 3:00 am.

Note You may need special rendering support for the <details> HTML tag being used in this document

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File history

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Version 1 (2023, Tuesday, May 16th at 4:00 pm PST)

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Note First version.

Changes

• Started the file
• Added the title section
• Added the Former Instagram usage section
• Added the file version timestamp
• No other changes in version 1

Version 2 (2023, Friday, August 11th at 7:17 pm PST)

[Click/tap here to expand/collapse the File history entry for version 2]

Note Going all out on this, as this page likely won't be updated by me again.

Changes

• Updated the Former Instagram usage section
• Added the Suspension section
• Converted the file version timestamp into the File info section
• Added the File history section
• • Added an entry for version 1
• • Added an entry for version 2
• Added the Footer
• No other changes in version 2

Version 3 (2023, Friday, August 11th at 8:23 pm PST)

[Click/tap here to expand/collapse the File history entry for version 3]

Note Some fixes, and some text improvements, it felt incomplete.

Changes

• Updated the Former Instagram usage section
• Updated the Suspension section
• Added the Account data section
• Updated the File info section
• Updated the File history section
• • Updated the entry for version 2
• • Added an entry for version 3
• No other changes in version 3

Version 4 (2023, Saturday, August 12th at 6:58 pm PST)

[Click/tap here to expand/collapse the File history entry for version 4]

Note There were some details I missed, and I want this document to be perfect. I was hoping I wouldn't have to touch this repository again today, but another update was made.

Changes

• Updated the Former Instagram usage section
• Updated the Suspension section
• • Added information on the DoB incident
• • Added information on the appeal process
• Updated the Account data section
• • Added separate links for HTML and JSON
• Updated the File info section
• Updated the File history section
• • Added an entry for version 4
• No other changes in version 4

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Footer

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You have reached the end of this file.

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EOF

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