Instagram to alert users before their account is disabled

Instagram, the video and image sharing social network, announced on Thursday, 18 July 2019, that it plans to update its account disable policy. This is not the first time that the social media platform has had to take another look at its policy this year — in May the company adjusted rules right after it banned a number of far-right extremists.

After the incidents in May, Instagram updated their policy and according to engadget, ‘accounts will be removed after an undisclosed amount of violations and an undisclosed window of time — it’ll be the same bar for every user, regardless of how often (or not) they post on Instagram. And Instagram doesn’t want to share the exact number of strikes it will put in place, or the timeframe for them because it doesn’t want bad actors to take advantage of the system’. 

Now Instagram has published a blog post where the company says “we are announcing a change to our account disable policy. Together with Facebook, we develop policies to ensure Instagram is a supportive place for everyone. These changes will help us quickly detect and remove accounts that repeatedly violate our policies”.

The post went on to say that as part of the approved updates, users will be notified when their account is at risk of becoming disabled — and if users think this is a mistake, they will have a window of time to appeal the ban. 

Instagram says, “If the content is found to be removed in error, we will restore the post and remove the violation from the account’s record”. However, if the content is in violation of the updated policy, it will be permanently removed. 

The updates are part of Instagrams plan to make the platform a ‘safe and supportive place’. 

By Jenna Cook

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