Instagram bans the truth

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."

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, telling the truth, 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.

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