Instagram has suspended scores of popular ‘meme’ accounts that collectively have tens of millions of followers, during a mass purge of the platform. The move was met with shock and anger by users.
The cull was carried out on Friday with no warning to users other than an email to tell the account holders that they had been suspended. One, @Finest.Inventions, claimed more than 13 million followers alone.
Let's get an F for all the meme pages that got deleted #instapurge #memepurge pic.twitter.com/g4ewl8kPW8
— Blank 🗝 (@kthankscya) July 27, 2019
Instagram told disgruntled users that the accounts were removed for “not following our terms” without providing more specific details on infractions. “We’re unable to restore accounts that are suspended for this reason,” the notice reportedly stated.
this is the endgame. 40m+ followers and over $600k+ in accounts lost in two days. @instagram @facebook fucking own up to what you did and rollback, you can’t stay silent in this. peronally lost 600k+ followers for no good reason. #reactivatespicy #memepurge pic.twitter.com/xpgy8KrH2d
— Ben (@spicymp4) July 27, 2019
A teenager named Caige whose two suspended accounts, @yerdank and @autist, boasted more than 850,000 followers, said he had made over $30,000 so far this year from the pages.
@instagram you just deleted all of my accounts for absolutely no reason, no warning, and no context behind this. (30 million+ followers worth of accounts deleted in 24 hours) #fuckinstagram #reactivateyerdank #reactivateautist pic.twitter.com/nJY6CvkQkW
— yerdank (@umCaige) July 26, 2019
Many users took to Twitter to condemn the #memepurge and call for Facebook, which owns Instagram, to reinstate the beloved comedy accounts. Some, however, were less sympathetic and accused the Instagrammers of benefiting from other people’s work.
Instagram updated their account disable policy just last week to “detect and remove accounts that repeatedly violate our policies.” However it’s not clear which policy the spate of suspended accounts violated.
As we continue to ridicule the censorship purge of Infowars, Alex Jones continues to trend with every hysterical trolling he unleashes to the meme world, recently with his most recent David Attenborough impression. Unfortunately for him, the left is enraged and demand he disavow such meme vitriol
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