Instagram and Threads moderation is out of control

On Threads, the topic of “Threads Moderation Failures” is trending. Some users complain their accounts are being deleted or restricted for linking to articles with controversial topics. Instagram and Threads boss Adam Mosseri is directly replying to some complaints and said he’s “looking into it.” And I’m one of many people who’s had their account deleted for allegedly being a child — which I am not.

Moderation is a perennial problem on social media, but based on social media posts and The Verge staff’s own experiences, Meta is currently banning and restricting users on a hair trigger. One of my colleagues was locked out of her account briefly this week after joking that she “wanted to die” because of a heatwave.

Others, like Jorge Caballero, say the automated system has added fact checks with mistakes to material it detects as political, as well as throttling posts with factual information for events like hurricanes. Some have dubbed their situation “crackergate,” as recent posts mentioning saltines or the words “cracker jacks” have been instantly removed.

Social media consultant Matt Navarra — who was notified his Threads account is getting downranked after sharing a story about how Tom Brady fell for a Meta AI hoax — got a response to his public complaint from Mosseri. “Looking into it...” Mosseri said. Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the issues.

And then there’s my Instagram account. On Tuesday, I loaded Instagram and learned Meta had disabled my account. The alleged reason was that I was under 13, the minimum age for joining the site. It gave me 30 days to appeal before the account was permanently disabled, asking me to upload a copy of my state ID. I decided to trust Meta’s promise it would be “stored securely and deleted within 30 days.” But after review, Meta insisted I was still underage.

“Our technology found your account, or activity on it, doesn’t follow our rules. As a result, a member of our team took action,” Meta’s moderation message told me. The call stood — no ifs, ands, or buts. Gone is every post and connection I’ve made since college on an account I had before Facebook bought out Instagram, and I feel a tiny bit dead inside.

Meta did allow me to request to download my data before it gets deleted, but then the link it provided failed to load.

Meta has faced intense public scrutiny about young people on its platforms, and it’s taken action in the face of regulation, restricting what underage teens can do on its services. It started requiring all Instagram users to put their birthdays on file in 2021.

I’m not sure why my ID wasn’t enough to verify my age, and I’m not sure whether the age-related bans are related to the other apparently restrictive moderation calls, like crackergate. But in some cases, this moderation makes the services a lot less useful. Gaming deal poster Wario64, for instance, has frequently posted about Threads flagging posts as spam or potentially automated. After running into the issue again on Prime Day posts this week, he said he’s done posting them for now — and future live gaming event coverage posts on Threads are “probably out of the question.”