Instagram had to put its tail between its legs and issue yet another apology banning another account over posting breastfeeding images, against their own policies. According to their statement,
“We looked into what happened here, and this was a pure mistake that we’ve now rectified. For context, our teams review content when it’s reported to us for violating our Community Guidelines.
They review millions of pieces of content daily – and as much as we’d like to be free of mistakes, we do make them. We are sorry that this happened, but we use cases like this to learn and improve.
https://instagram.com/p/5_Hbowx4wb/
This time it happened, ironically, on the first day of World Breastfeeding Week. The account that was suspended belongs to Melissa Jean Wilbraham, a photographer well-known for her maternity, birth and newborn photos. When she attempted to log into her account she received the following message:
Your account has been deleted for not following our terms. We’re unable to restore accounts that are deleted for these types of violations.
https://instagram.com/p/5T7-maR4-f/
The Queensland’s Sunshine Coast based photographer had 18,000 followers on Instagram at the time and considers it to be a major part of her business. For the time that the Instagram bosses left her in limbo she thought she had lost her business. Instagram reversed its decision and her account was restored.
Instagram needs to really get their stuff together. It’s obvious that their policy supporting breastfeeding photos is not enough as this keeps happening. Time to step it up and get a better system in place, Instagram.
