What's happened with my Instagram account?
September 26, 2015 4:30 PM   Subscribe

i have an intentionally small bunch of followers on Instagram, and recently chose to unfollow one of them. Then I got a long list of ridiculous suggestions for new followers, the first few showing up on my homepage, which I x'd to delete. My other followers/followings are still listed as good, but I have not seen any of their posts for these 5 days, and apparently they can't see mine from yesterday. (I clicked on their names to make sure they had made some new posts.). What could be going on?
posted by mmiddle to Computers & Internet (4 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wait, a short list of people you follow or a short list of people who follow you.

Instagram has huge problems with "spam" accounts being set up to be fake followers for other people. If you have very few followers but many accounts followed you might have gotten sort of shadowbanned. Especially if you don't post much.

Unfortunately now that they're part of the facebook empire they have essentially no support, jsut report buttons. Personally think it should be illegal for big social platforms to cloister themselves away like that, but that's a whole other subject...
posted by emptythought at 4:51 PM on September 26, 2015


Response by poster: Hm, thanks - both lists are short, but I and they post at least once a week, and some of us always "like" each other's posts regardless. So, fairly active, though minimal info in my profile. I do have a fake Facebook account, for convenience, but that seems to be unaffected.
posted by mmiddle at 5:13 PM on September 26, 2015


Are you using a web client or the app? If the app, which platform? I can't imagine a situation where people you did not follow showed up in your home feed.

I'm also unclear what you mean by "x'd to delete" because on my android app, I do not see an x to delete someone you follow.

In terms of your app not updating with your follower's photos, and vice versa, perhaps it is as Emptythought said and your account has been locked somehow. Or maybe for some reason your app is not uploading or downloading content? Perhaps uninstalling and reinstalling the app might fix that, or making a new account.
posted by rebent at 3:12 PM on September 27, 2015


Response by poster: Great brainstorming! And, app. Yesterday it cleared up after a new update was applied, so who knows. The x was by the unsolicited suggestions for new followings - I thought maybe I was being nudged to enlarge my account. Still a bit of a mystery, but problem solved. Thank you!
posted by mmiddle at 6:35 PM on September 27, 2015


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