Both sides are reasonable, a common form of spam uses hacked accounts that have grown organically, the normal way, and have then been abandoned. Because they have been used the normal way they are ranked higher than accounts created by bots. So it isn’t that strange that the account is flagged if it suddenly starts posting and the first post is some product.

It’s also reasonable not to want to provide Instagram not to have too much information because after all it is Meta, however it’s debatable whether sharing a photo with a photo sharing service is too much information.

> > I might as well let them delete my account that only follows a bunch of people I know without ever looking at their pictures.

> Both sides are reasonable, a common form of spam uses hacked accounts that have grown organically, the normal way, and have then been abandoned.

That does not seem to be the case here.

When it comes to money, sure, take caution. When it comes to a dozen-or-so followers+followees, abandoned a decade ago with hardly any posts... congratulations, your marketing efforts or network effects were successful and they're back. Now stop trying to steal their personal data under the guise of "security".

If you must, feel free to make a password recovery via their emergency mail or something, but don't try to steal personal data.

If you want to complain, complain about Meta abusing recovery mechanisms for spam.

The rest just doesn’t work; the accounts get hacked using the recovery mechanism because the email accounts get hacked or expire and they get used for spam.

Posting to Instagram really isn't the same as posting a photo to the internet in general though. That for-profit business is running the software, hosting the servers, and writing their own terms of service, they can block what they want at that point.

The real fundamental change after the dot om bubble was that the open web effectively died and was replaced with a handful of walled gardens. If you have your own site and post pictures to it there are very few that can stop you, posting to Instagram and you're effectively politely requesting a company to take rights to your photo and host or online if they would be so kind.

This. You're putting yourself at the mercy of these companies, and they have no mercy.

Having dealt with this professionally in the past, this reads like arm-chair engineering. Someone whose never had to deal with this for real on any scale in the same context.

> But instagram is not a bank.

Doesn't matter. At all.

> Plus it shouldn't require personal identification to post a photo online

Technically, it doesn't.

> especially given how easy it has became to filter out illegal content automatically.

This is wrong on so many levels. The picture doesn't have to be illegal for Instagram to want to ensure you account wasn't taken over. An old account, suddenly posting pictures, even legal ones, might be someone trying to scam someone.

Just so much wrong with this comment.

Then please explain my wrongness levels. Apart from data grab, what is the issue? Could company be accountable if somebody logged in with correct username and password and posted legal pictures? Because if it doesn't matter if it's bank or not, my bank clearly states that it is not accountable in such scenario.