Anxiety-Inducing Stories of Suspended Social Media Accounts
And steps you can take to avoid losing yours
The fine art photographer Ben Hopper has had the same profile picture on his (verified) Facebook account for ten years: a portrait of a woman on the beach. She’s wearing a unicorn mask and nothing else.
“The nudity is implied,” the artist explains. “You can't see anything that’s been restricted by community guidelines (nipples, private parts), but you can tell that she's naked.”
In May, Hopper was put on notice: the unicorn mask photo put his account “at risk,” meaning it could mean his page wouldn’t be suggested to people and its distribution would be reduced. He was also at risk of being suspended.
On Facebook and Instagram, some community guidelines are very clear—e.g. no misinformation, hate speech, or bullying. But others, like the nudity restrictions, lend themselves to gray areas. Hopper’s beach portrait followed the rules, but he still got a warning that his page was at risk.
If your account gets suspended, it can be notoriously difficult to reach an actual person who can help you get it back (unless you know someone at the company). As it happens, some influencers are getting so desperate to get their accounts back that they’re turning to clandestine dealers and hackers for help (more on this later).
To get a better understanding of how and why Facebook and Instagram remove content or suspend accounts, we talked to three people with firsthand experience. What steps did they take to get their accounts back, and did any of them actually work? Some did.