Instagram bans reality

In my time as an independent blogger exposing chavista criminals I've dealt with some spectacular lies. Once, Carlos Herrera, a close associate and personal friend of Nicolas Maduro who runs a website called primicias24.com, posted that my mother (deceased in 1983) was wanted in connection to a drug trafficking ring that dispatched mules (people carrying drugs) to Europe and the U.S. between 2006 and 2010. Herrera even posted travel logs of my deceased mother that took place decades after her death. Herrera also posted once that I had AIDS, and was irresponsibly spreading it due to my promiscuous homosexuality.

Such impossible to explain arguments do not require fact checking in the chavista world of course, and one might be inclined to think that in the real world claims of the type would be, naturally, immediately dismissed. Not on Instagram though, or on Twitter* and Google* for that matter.

Got an email the other day about a post Instagram had deleted from my account. It was a copyright claim, from someone identifying as "therudygiuliani", emailing from [email protected]. The post in question contained the now famous photo taken by Evan Vucci seen above, with the caption "America just got a new president…", which I posted on my IG account on 13 July 2024.

For well over a year it didn’t bother "therudygiuliani" that I was "breaching" his copyrights by making use of the picture, but on the 22 of March 2026 it did. I wrote to IG, explaining this was another fraudulent attempt to basically get me banned, by filing completely spurious copyright infringement claims. No reply was received, of course. 

On 1 April 2026 Gonzalo Morales Divo, a convicted criminal (in Venezuela and in the U.S.), who's very good friends with Delcy Rodriguez, filed a copyright complaint with Soundcloud from [email protected]. In this instance, Morales Divo claimed that my recording and posting of a phone call, where he is making all kinds of threats against me and my family, is a violation of his copyrights, presumably the right to repeatedly call investigative journalists, while under the influence, to shout abuse and make threats of violence. Soundcloud immediately proceeded to delete the recording in question.

When I posted on IG about Morales Divo preposterous claims, I got a warning from IG that said "Several people reported one of your recent posts. Want to review it?" I did not.

This morning, another deletion email from IG, related to a post about Goblin Mode, first ever term admitted to the Oxford Dictionary by public vote. Its meaning is described as: “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations”. On 10 December 2022 I posted: '#goblinmode, word of the year as per #oxfordenglishdictionary. Never a better description of the current political class in this, and many other countries around the world.'

It stayed there, not causing any copyright claims, until the early hours of today (00:42), when someone identifying as "@guardian" and writing from [email protected], filed a claim about the picture I used for the post, which is an illustration I took from The Guardian website back in December 2022.

IG sent a more stern email at 00:49: "Take action or lose access to alek.boyd".

I woke up to the news and tried to request a review to the decision at 08:39. A reply came back: "Your account has been reported multiple times for violating someone else's rights. We previously warned you that if you continued to infringe the intellectual property rights of third parties, your account would be disabled."

Truthfully, I have not violated anyone's copyrights, so I replied immediately (09:00) explaining the obvious. At 09:14 IG replied with: "As a user of Instagram, you have agreed to our Terms of Use, which states that users are prohibited from taking any action on Instagram that infringes or violates someone else's rights or otherwise violates the law. When we receive a proper claim of intellectual property rights infringement, we promptly remove or disable access to the allegedly infringing content. We also terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances."

"We previously warned you that if you continued to infringe the rights of third parties, we would terminate your account. Accordingly, your account has been deactivated and you are no longer permitted to use Instagram."

In conclusion, pointing at reality, whether about Donald Trump's election, new terms admitted to the Oxford Dictionary or exposing convicted criminals will be banned by Instagram.

* Twitter also permanently deleted my verified account when I exposed the China registry scam years ago. Google is the easiest prey of all: fraudulent DMCA claims are processed by its office in Hyderabad, where no verification of validity is ever applied. As a consequence, perfectly legitimate investigative journalism gets deleted from searches. In my case, my full name is regularly used to make fake copyrights claims to Google about my own work, that is I (allegedly) file DMCA claims against myself, and Google quickly proceeds to delete "infringing" material.

Added much later: have a look at the email below that IG eventually sent me after reviewing my account. Don't know what to say really.

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More deletion notifications from IG & META:

Meta and Instagram continue processing completely fake copyright infringement claims about my account, which after reinstatement saw the number of followers grow to ~45,000 (all from India and between 13-17 years of age) and then started to unfollow in mass (guess posts about chavismo’s corruption don’t interest them…)

A couple of deveopments I have noticed. First, IG doesn’t bother sending details about alleged copyright violations and who files them any longer, the emails are just empty (see below). Now it is META sending those details (see below). 

​The second thing I have noticed is that those filing copyright infringement claims have discovered ProtonMail, and are using freshly registered email addresses to send those communications to IG.

​The arguments used by the troupe of imbeciles / bots hired for the purpose aren't getting anymore credible. The latest one, received this morning, was filed by Barbados Today, allegedly. It claimed that a post containing a photo of handcuffed Nicolas Maduro aboard a helicopter en route to the U.S., after the military operation that removed him from power in January 3, was a copy of a tweet that they had posted on X before me. Only trouble is that Barbados Today’s isn’t the source of the image in question, but President Donald Trump, who posted it in his Truth Social account.

Since IG decided to reinstate my account, I have received eight (8) further notifications about deletion of other posts. My guess is that eventually, through the systematic filing of claims, all the posts on my IG account will be deleted. Sending appeals is completely futile, as META is running AI systems trained for immediate rejection and send a reply stating "This decision was made by our technology.”

I am no longer using IG, uninstalled the app, but will keep updating this to record how AI and unaccountable social media companies are gamed to shut down critics.

12 June 2026 update.

Three days ago (09 June) I posted the following on IG:

"This account is going to go quiet for the foreseeable future. Instagram is processing fake copyright infringement claims against this account on a daily basis, from individuals that actually have nothing to do with the copyrights of the materials / content / photos they falsely claim to own. Instagram doesn’t make the slightest effort to corroborate accuracy of this infringement claims. Instagram’s appeal process is completely useless. At the current rate, it is likely that every last post I have ever posted here will be deleted for “copyright violations”. Hacking attempts have also taken place. The amount of followers (13-17 years of age mostly from India) has increased (bought most likely) and I have nothing to do with it. Therefore, I’m turning this into a private account and I’m out, but I expect it won’t last very long anyway. Do not use this platform to get in touch with me.”

Instagram proceeded to suspend my account, now permanently. This time it didn't even bother sending an email communicating that my account had been permanently suspended. 

I reinstalled the app this morning and saw the account had been suspended on 08 June. I clicked on the “Download your information” link and got that, my information, nothing about posts uploaded since 2014 when I created the account. The post above stating reasons why I would no longer be using Instagram -posted on 09 June- can only be seen in “Posts viewed”. Instagram is, in fact, worse than what Twitter was when it decided to suspend my verified @alekboyd account, because it does not even allow downloading and keeping the content I have created over the years.

I will not be using social media platforms in the foreseeable future. 

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