So what REALLY happened to fun_time_haver?
Back in August, I was stoked. I’d created an account in May where I just shared my thoughts and what I was doing in the moment. Really simple stuff, a gradient background with a voice to text that would say stuff like “gonna have pizza tonight” or “gonna draw today” really simple blog stuff. Never expected it to go anywhere, just wanted a space to have fun and share my silly thoughts.
Little did I know, people would really like this format for whatever reason. I got more attention than I’ve ever gotten in my life! But that didn’t really matter to me. I almost didn’t really notice I’d hit 10k until it happened. I was mostly just happy to interact with people. It made me feel happy that so many people took an interest in me.
So, I decide I’m gonna celebrate 10k. I’m gonna make a cake! And decorate it! How fun! But, I get done with my cake, ready to edit a video of me making it. Log into my account and…. What the fuck is this?
Banned? Banned for what? I might have the most innocuous account on all of Instagram. I just post about my thoughts on bugs and what I’m gonna eat that day. How could this happen?
The ban is for CSE content. What? CSE? That can’t be true. I would never do that. I know I have never done that. You can download all my info from my account and see I’ve never done that, in my life.
In fact, I’ve been very careful when interacting with people on my account. I’ve never flirted with anyone but one friend I’ve known for years. Whenever anyone says they love me I just say thank you for the support. I’ve been careful to never cross the line with any of my followers, let alone those who are younger than me. I’ve never even posted a photo of myself, let alone any child. I’ve only ever sent photos in DMs to my friends, which are usually of animals. There’s no way this has happened.
At this point, I’m freaking out. I start frantically googling and find a Reddit community called r/InstagramDisabledHelp. No way.
There are thousands—and I mean thousands—of people in my exact same situation. News articles of school teachers randomly banned for CSE despite never engaging in anything of that sort. 14 year old accounts randomly banned one day for seemingly no reason. What the fuck is happening?
Well, Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, in all their wisdom, decided in 2023 to switch to AI only moderation. Since then, it’s been known to go haywire and ban anybody and everybody. Every few months, there’s a wave of unjustified bans all over the site, wiping thousands upon thousands of accounts for CSE or integrity. No one knows what trips the AI, just that the waves come and go routinely. I just happened to be caught up in another ban wave.
At this point I’m thinking, what the hell. Not only is the AI moderation not doing its job properly, but Meta is refusing to acknowledge the problem. There’s a change.org petition with over 40k signatures, but it doesn’t seem like that’s bringing much attention to the higher ups at Meta.
But I think, yknow, surely Meta has to have some form of customer service, right? Someone I can email and explain my situation to. A line to call.
Well, I thought wrong. There’s two emails that are nearly impossible to find. One, I email and to this day haven’t received any sort of response from. The other returns an automatic message saying the inbox is full. Great.
Customer service does exist, but only for those with Meta Verified. Yeah. That’s right. You can ONLY access customer service if you have a PAID SUBSCRIPTION to meta verified. What the fuck ever. I’ll make a new account and try to get verified so I can talk this out with someone.
I link one through my Facebook. Get in contact with my friends I know only through Instagram to tell them of my situation. I pay the dollar for meta verified, submit my passport, and wait.
Two days later, that account is banned for being associated with fun_time_haver. Whatever. Okay. The Reddit says I have to do it on a new device. I will.
Make a new account on my iPad. Turn on my VPN. Submit my info for meta verified. Immediate ban for association. Fuck.
Third times a charm. I make a new account on my drawing tablet. Turn on my VPN. Use an email and phone number with no association to any of my other accounts. Submit my info for meta verified.
What the hell am I supposed to do? I know it’s a wrongful ban. I’m just trying to get some help! Technically, my situation is better than most others in my situation since I’m still stuck on appeal. If I could just get through to somebody and explain my situation, I’m sure the appeal could go faster.
But I can’t. I’ve exhausted all options. I’ve emailed the emails that never work for anyone. I’ve tried meta verified. All I have left now to do is wait.
So I do wait. I wait and I wait, and now it’s the 23rd of September. Almost a month since my suspension, and I haven’t heard a single thing.
What do I even do if I get my account back? A month away is detrimental for any kind of engagement. Most people will have forgotten about me in the annals of Instagram Create Mode content creators. What if I get my account back and I’m just banned again? What if they ban me for real that time and the account is well and truly gone? Do I even want to keep using Instagram after an experience as bad as this?
The worst part about it is that I truly don’t care all that much about the numbers. I mean to say I don’t care at all would be a lie, I love attention. But what made me happy about my account was the engagement I got. I liked talking to people.
I’m pretty obviously chronically online, I get that. But I guess it felt good to have people to talk to at any time of the day. I’m a diagnosed autistic and although I was in therapy for a number of years working through how to better deal with the challenges I face, the biggest challenge I still face day to day is social interaction. There are things about it I just fundamentally don’t understand. Above all else, I struggle most with making and maintaining relationships. fun_time_haver really made me feel like I was coming out of my shell. That I was interacting with people in a meaningful way, finally.
A bigger issue is the friends I’ve lost in the face of this all. It’s pretty stupid of me to have just kept communication up to Instagram. Probably should have traded numbers somewhere along the way. But I didn’t, and now it’s been a month where I haven’t spoken to some of my closest and most genuine friends. And why don’t you guys have the same handles across websites, huh? Twitter isn’t ideal but I could have found you!
I miss engaging with people day to day. That’s not to say I don’t have friends in real life, but I struggle with my own thoughts sometimes. When I’m left alone in my dorm at the end of the day it seems sometimes like all I do is ruminate on everything I’ve ever done wrong. Just nice to have a distraction from that! And obviously my irl friends have their own lives and can’t be talking to me 24/7.
The whole situation has just been a shitshow. Meta has no way for me to get my account back that doesn’t come with a price tag. It could be another two months before they decide to actually look at my appeal. If I even do get my account back, there’s no guarantee it will stay up. Plenty of people have been unbanned and rebanned.
It feels sort of hopeless. I know the legacy of fun_time_haver is there. People still occasionally comment on my friends’ posts about me. I’m not totally forgotten, which is cool. I just wish none of it would have happened this way.
If I had gotten banned for something related to how much I post in a day, I would have taken it on the chin. But I got banned for something I know I verifiably didn’t do. And they’re taking forever to even acknowledge my appeal.
There’s not much I can do now. I’ve tried to restart but my motivation to post isn’t very high. I know Instagram is about as good as it would get for me, and floundering to try and get engagement on other platforms just makes me look…. Sort of pathetic. Realistically, it’s over. I lost so many friends and mutuals I genuinely cared about and at this point I’ve been pretty much ousted from Instagram as a whole. Fuck my chungus life, I guess.
This is my 10k cake I made. My 10kake. It was a tres leches cake because that’s the only kind I know how to make. It tastes like garbage because I had to substitute sugar with some random thing I found in my cupboard. Fitting, I guess.
It has some things I was known for. The propellor hate and lollipop, obviously, and a green beetle. A pibble and a green buge, and someone asked me to put an ant on there.
And here, with mismatched candles and a pillow of my dog, is where fun_time_haver hangs. In limbo. Some sort of ban purgatory. Will I be back? I don’t know. There’s a chance they look at my appeal and still ban me, even after a month. There’s a chance I’m unbanned and then rebanned. It looks like the storybook has closed on my little fun time having account. Of course I’m sad about it. I’ll never stop being angry about it. Hopefully someday my friends can find me again. Until then, I was just another small fling in the history of the internet.
