RE: I got reminded how much centralized social media can suck - my Instagram got deleted
That's a good point, many of these problems (and I'm guessing your account removal was one) are created by overzealous bots with flawed metrics and not enough oversight, and people like you are being caught up in an oversensitive spam filter.
This is a digression, but my point about not operating as a business was more directed at recent actions by Youtube (though Facebook has been accused of similar censorship and lack of transparency in the way they curate people's feeds), where they've been demonetizing or removing accounts that don't appear to break the terms of service but do apparently fall into some undocumented list of things that Youtube finds unacceptable. Some very high profile Youtube accounts have fallen foul of this and haven't been able to get answers or resolution from Youtube when they try to contact them (this has been happening for a long time but seems to have ramped up recently), which leads one to conclude that the problem is not a random issue with indiscriminate bots (easily fixable, especially for large channels) but more likely part of an idealogical design from management. They're smart enough to know that driving off large channels (who have enough influence to help grow competing networks) isn't good for business, so I would conclude that business is not their #1 priority.
Even on YouTube, creators are still not the real business, but more like the product that is being sold to advertisers. My guess would be that they are trying to clean up in a way that would allow them to attract better paying advertisers as many spenders don't want to advertise on places that are not "pristine". I think Google in general have lost a lot of advertisers in the past year and now with less money to go around, they might be trying to get back into the market by elevating the quality of the content that gets ads by making the standards higher and cutting out a lot of the content. I think they are still acting like a business, but like a business that is in trouble and is looking for ways to get back into the game. Not a good sign for them. Hopefully a very good sign for decentralization.
Possibly that is the reasoning and the motive. For the sake of everyone, I hope you are right, but I don't think it will work out well for them all the same.
Any luck getting your Instagram account back?
Oh, I don't think it's going to work them that well either.
And nope, I haven't gotten my account back and I even created a new one.
That's awful and disappointing. I'm sorry! :(
Thank you, I appreciate that. After all, that's life, nothing I can do.
I bet it's not gone forever if the right people can be reached. :\