Instagram Announced on Tuesday, Feb. 11th that their support and appeals process will be improved with two new features.
The first is more transparency in reporting the content on Instagram and the second is a better appeals process for disabled accounts.
Support Requests
You can report content that’s against Instagram’s Community Guidelines. Now, you can see the status of that report. Go to “Settings,” then choose “Support Requests.” Here you can view the status of your reports and your report history. There are also options to unfollow, block or mute the user you’ve reported. If you disagree with Instagram’s decision on your report, you can pick “request a review” to have them take another look.
This is part of the platform’s effort to streamline support (which hasn’t been the best in the past.) This increase in good customer service practices by IG makes me glad.
Instagram says that they take action on reported posts that go against community guidelines, but won’t take action just because multiple reports are filed against a user or post.
New Appeal Process
You can now file an appeal with Instagram directly, instead of going to the Instagram Help Center. If your account gets disabled, you can now choose the in-app appeal option that appears when you try and log into your disabled account. You can tell Instagram the reason that they made a mistake in disabling your account, then request a review to possibly get your account restored. This will be great for Influencers and businesses who get shut down seemingly without reason. Now, we can ask Instagram to take a closer look, should a misunderstanding occur.
Why the Updates?
Instagram is doing this to support online safety and help prevent online bullying. If you have a business, I doubt that you’re out there bullying people (lol.) It’s good news that Instagram has streamlined their appeals process so that we can more easily report unfairly disabled accounts (it happens sometimes), and get them back so that we can continue building good relationships with our IG audience.
