Tell HN: Instagram suspended my friend's business without warning or recourse

7 points

3 years ago

My friend Clio has spent the past few years building her own fashion brand in NYC. She painstakingly designs all of her clothes by hand, putting months of effort into single pieces.

Clio recently released her fall-winter 2023 collection. She has a website for her brand (https://cliogalea.com/pages/fw23-angel-fire-disco-club), but in NYC in the fashion industry most business is still conducted on Instagram. Her new collection was received with great interest and Clio was in the middle of corresponding with some important business connections when--without warning, notice, or reason given--Instagram suspended her brand's account (https://www.instagram.com/cliogalea/). This has had the following impacts:

1. For the agents and representatives she was corresponding with, she now has no way to contact them - potentially compromising impactful business opportunities. 2. For her current clientele who are awaiting orders or commissions and have already committed deposits, having her brand page disappear without warning has caused confusion and concern. 3. All references to her brand and her new collection have disappeared from Instagram due to the account being suspended pending investigation. Word of mouth on social media is a huge part of the fashion industry, particularly in NYC, and the timing is particularly devastating given the months of work that went into the release of her new collection.

When Clio's account was suspended she was given no warning or reason for the suspension. She was told that she would receive an update on the suspension within 24 hours, but there's been no correspondence for days nor opportunity for her to gain clarity or appeal the suspension.

I know HN may say this is just another reason to avoid dependency on Instagram, Google, etc. in case access is revoked and I agree with this, but for small businesses like Clio's, Instagram is a necessity until there is a systemic change to how the fashion industry operates.

For me personally, it's especially concerning that we seem to be moving towards a world in which increasingly many decisions will be delegated to automated systems and there will be no opportunity for recourse. Throughout this process Clio has not been able to speak to a single human at Instagram about why her account was suspended. I can only imagine the situation becoming more stark in the future with large language models becoming more accessible.

If anyone has any advice here on how to navigate this situation or get my friend's account restored, it would be greatly appreciated.