Summary:  Many people had their Instagram accounts disabled today May 23rd. But even more played a game of telephone based off of misinformation and a viral hoax that spread across at least five social platforms with instructions on how to ward off the account deletion happening to you. Based off of social chatter, accounts appear to be getting restored without user-intervention, but it’s happening in waves, and not everybody is restored yet.

As of 11PM 7AM 9AM pacific, May 24, Instagram has yet to make official public statement, though they have privately responded to at least one person.

[update: Instagram spokesperson responded to Buzzfeed privately, assured problem was temporary. Still not clarifying what happened.]

Events as they unfolded (in my mind).

The worst hoaxes are based on a bit of reality.

There’s was/is a bit of chatter on Tumblr, YouTube, Twtter, Facebook, aaaaand Instagram this afternoon/evening about mass-account deletions on Instagram.

Some folks said their account was “disabled,” some said “deleted.”

The inconsistency made me pause. Not that we all have to use the same language, we are all special snowflakes, but computer-generated messages and dialogs are consistent, and when you see them first-hand, you tend to repeat them verbatim.

Plus, freaky they’re-gonna-shut-down-Facebook hoaxes pulse through social platforms with some regularity. 

In other words, I suspected a hoax.

The case for the hoax?

#dontdeletemyaccount (and variations) spread throughout Instagram, and leaked onto Twitter and Tumblr, accompanied by some shady “official” messages.

(screenshot of statigram Instagram SERP for #dontdeletemyaccount below)

#sideeye

Not that you needed to be CSI: Instagram to figure this out.

Tumblr was onto it.

That said, lots of people who complained about getting their Instagram deleted, immediately made new Instagram usernames, with only a few (new) photos.

That’s a lot of work to perpetuate a hoax.

Plus some people weren’t including a call-to-action in their account of getting disabled. (A critical part of hoaxy opportunism.)

And people were making YouTube videos.

I started to think there was some legit issue.

Facebook:

(Bing social SERP result) 

Tumblr:

Twitter:

Both MarketingLand and 9to5mac covered the story, but neither had a definitive interpretation of events. We were all going off of social chatter.

[Update: 9to5mac is reporting some users saying they’re accounts have been restored.]

Given that Instagram responded (privately) to somebody from CNBC, it’s certain that there was a legit issue.

I’m sure we can expect all accounts to be restored soon, in addition to an official statement.

In the meantime:

[Update March 20: Looks like the Sexual Favers have flamed out. Way less chatter about “favorite bots” as of March 19th]

original post:

Feelin’ on fire lately?

Think you’re a regular @robdelaney?

Sorry, baby. Those favers got a tweet in every port.

Spammers are exploiting a small inefficiency in how Twitter does rate limits/ suspends new accounts.

In general, new accounts have a tighter leash than aged accounts, and anything that just starts spewing links or @-ing people gets shut down fast. 

However, the leash gets a little looser when it comes to favoriting tweets- and the world of weird spam has figured this out, so they’re spawning (and willing to let rapidly die) sexual favers.

I predict Twitter will soon adjust the “tripwire” for new accounts to include favorite activity as well.

I’ve seen some cynical snorts about Twitter’s new filter attribute in the API (ranking tweets as none/low/medium/high in value).

Y’all are crazy. This is rad. First: the concept already exists (ever seen Top tweets vs All in search results? Only every day.).

What’s new is the API support- why would you not want this available in the API? In general, anything in the app, should be in the API. (Reminder: Y’all get really vocal whenever Twitter gets stingy with the API).

Second, I see the same mofos complain about how “easy” it would be for Twitter to stop spam, why haven’t they solved it, etc.

Like say… when 1 hour-old bot accounts start dive-bombing a hashtag. (img below).

Wouldn’t it be cool to just filter that out? The new filters works towards making that possible.

Now lemme get even more radical: You know those “@-bots” that reply to you if you’ve unknowingly triggered them with some special gift-card offer?

Wouldn’t be cool if your interactions could be adjusted to not show @-replies from say… accounts that were 6 minutes old? This gets way easier if tweets have a rating attribute.

TL;DR: I’m making a field guide for agencies and brands who want to avoid getting snagged in spammer nets on social platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and now is the time to let me know what you need included in it.

(breathe)

As my Twitter family saw earlier today, I’ve been conducting some live-editing parties (they get pretty crazy, *nerd snort*) on Google Docs for a new field guide that will be released in 2013 all about…

RATE LIMITS ON SOCIAL PLATFORMS

</voice of God>

Basically it’s all about Twitter Jail, Pinterest Jail, getting annoying captchas thrown atcha every other second, and getting suspended… when you’re an innocent agency just minding your own marketing business.

This field guide is not for agressive marketers. It’s for agencies and brands who manage lots of accounts, and accidentally get treated like spammers. #injustice

As people who’ve been in on the Google Docs editing sessions know, there is already a lot of structure and content, but it’s not too late to throw stuff at me about what you/your agency needs included.

The usual contact methods:

twitter @bluechoochoo
tumblr [reblog this post w/commentary or send Tumblr Mail]
email: lilbluechoochoo [at] google’s mail situation

If you wanna be kept in the loop, sign up for the mailing list.

(screenshot/preview from live-editing session below. Ripped from the Google Docs)