Ask HN: How can I set up an Instagram account if I keep getting Instabanned?

[richrichardsson]

This must seem like the dumbest question ever, but every time I try to set up an account for my business via the website, I get "Something went wrong please try again later." Then when I try again later it tells me the email/username has been taken (I'm running out of ideas for usernames now that make sense for the business). If I try logging in with the supposed failed sign up credentials I get told that the account has been banned for violating the terms & conditions (not sure how I can violate the T&Cs without ever having logged in or even successfully sign up). Visiting the help pages for Instagram gives some promising forms to fill in, but upon submitting I get a "This page does not exist." error showing up.

I did manage somehow to get hold of a human, perhaps via support@instagram.com, but they told me to go see the help pages and fill in the broken forms, and when I replied that they are broken they told me "I cannot help you through this channel". (so much for "support")

The help pages mention that to appeal a banned account I must use the App, but I don't really feel like installing the App given how useless the experience has been so far. Is this really the only way I can resolve this?

Any ideas on how I can get this fixed, help me please HN!

[danuker]

Are you behind a proxy? Firewall? Ad blocker?

[richrichardsson → danuker]

I have a PiHole, I'll try disabling it and signing up (yet again!)

[richrichardsson → richrichardsson]

Holy crap! That was it.

There is nothing in the T&Cs to say you may not use an ad blocker, what planet are they on to think that breaking their sign up process if you do have an ad blocker is a good idea?

Thanks for the help!

[dylz → richrichardsson]

There are multiple sites that will block your access completely if they detect an ad blocker - that isn't ad related.

I contribute to the EasyPrivacy list a bit, and there are a number of sites that do massive device fingerprinting, loading Java, Windows Media, attempting to livestream, enumerate your ports with websockets, port scan your LAN after getting your LAN subnet via WebRTC, if you refuse any of these your account is flagged as fraud.

[noir_lord → dylz]

With all this stuff you get to a point where you think Stallman retrieving pages and emailing them to himself was the smart move.

[dylz → noir_lord]

I would be unsurprised if Instagram was collecting a lot more than just this, but the web-login for Facebook used to use websockets to portscan VNC/RDP/etc ports on localhost in addition to all the fingerprinting and enumeration, so this entire situation wasn't exactly surprising