If you make your living online, what’s happening on Instagram right now should stop you in your tracks.

In the past few months, millions of accounts — creators, entrepreneurs, artists, even verified users — have vanished overnight. Flagged, restricted, or permanently deleted with no clear explanation.

Not because they broke rules, but because Meta’s new AI-driven moderation system thinks they might have.

This is not rumor. It’s happening at scale, across continents. And for countless creators who spent years building brands on Instagram, it’s nothing short of devastating.

Tone, structure, and feedback area.

Since mid-2025, Instagram has been rolling out new automated moderation systems to comply with EU safety regulations and internal “authenticity” campaigns. In theory, it’s about fighting spam and abuse. In practice, it’s punishing the very people who helped build the platform.

Creators across Reddit, X (Twitter), and Meta’s own forums describe the same nightmare: sudden bans, false flags for “child exploitation” or “spam,” and endless loops in a broken appeal process.

What’s triggering these bans?

Each of these normal business practices now risks triggering an automated “review,” which can escalate into permanent suspension — with no human ever seeing your case.

And if you appeal? Expect a polite auto-reply followed by silence. Support has been described as “Kafkaesque” — an endless loop of forms, bots, and closed tickets.

For creators, this isn’t a minor inconvenience — it’s existential.

One day you’re running campaigns, engaging followers, and earning income; the next, your entire digital identity is gone. Years of work, relationships, and brand trust — erased by an algorithm.

“I’ve verified my ID five times,” wrote one creator. “Every time I’m reinstated, I get flagged again. There’s no explanation — just a new restriction notice from a bot.”

Another added:

“My account is my business. It’s how I get clients. Losing it isn’t losing followers — it’s losing my job.”

Some creators report that even after being reinstated, the same restrictions return within days. Others say they’re accused of “policy violations” so vague that they can’t even identify what behavior to change.

Instagram built a generation of entrepreneurs — and now, those same people live in daily fear of deletion.

Meta insists these new measures are about user safety, but the rollout shows how dangerous unchecked automation can be.

The AI doesn’t understand intent, nuance, or context.

It sees patterns, not people.

If you manage multiple accounts, it sees a network.

If your engagement suddenly spikes, it sees a bot.

If you repurpose content across platforms, it sees a “farm.”

Under the banner of “authenticity,” Instagram is waging an algorithmic war on efficiency — penalizing behaviors that professional creators rely on to scale.

And this isn’t an isolated cleanup. Internal sources and third-party monitors estimate millions of accounts have already been wiped — many legitimate, some high-profile.

It’s a scorched-earth strategy, and creators are caught in the crossfire.

Here’s the brutal truth: creators have no rights on these platforms. Instagram provides no direct support line, no transparent appeal process, and no external oversight. You can lose your business in seconds — and the company owes you nothing. For a trillion-dollar corporation, that’s astonishing. Imagine a bank freezing your account, refusing to explain why, and then ignoring your calls. That’s how the current Instagram ecosystem feels for countless creators. This imbalance of power — one company controlling your reach, audience, and income — is the fundamental flaw of the creator economy. You don’t own your audience. You rent it. And now, your landlord has an AI enforcer.

For years, Instagram encouraged people to “build a brand,” “go full-time,” and “monetize your passion.” Millions did exactly that — investing time, creativity, and trust. Now, the same platform that profited from their work is deleting them for using the tools it once promoted. This isn’t moderation — it’s mass collateral damage. Creators aren’t asking for special treatment. They’re asking for fairness, transparency, and the right to be treated as professionals, not disposable data points in a machine-learning experiment. If platforms can erase your livelihood with no human review, the creator economy isn’t an economy — it’s a lottery.

The creator community must start demanding real protections.

Here’s what needs to happen next:

Until these rights exist, creators will remain vulnerable to the whims of opaque algorithms.

Next week in The Creator’s Edge, we’re going beyond outrage.

We’ll publish:

This isn’t about politics — it’s about survival.

Platforms answer to shareholders. Governments answer to voters.

Creators are both.

While we wait for accountability, protect yourself:

Most importantly, start moving your audience to channels you control — Beehiiv, your own website, or a private community. Build something that can’t be taken away overnight.

Instagram’s latest purge has exposed a hard truth: creators built the modern internet — but they don’t own any of it.

The platform made billions off our content, engagement, and culture, and now its automated systems are erasing us like errors in a spreadsheet.

If millions of innocent accounts can disappear without cause, then “community guidelines” mean nothing.

This isn’t a moderation failure. It’s a power failure.

And the only way to fix it is for creators to stand up, speak out, and reclaim control of their digital livelihoods.

Because the next wave of deletions is coming.

And this time, we need to be ready.