Make Instagram prioritise the victims of impersonation

Make Instagram prioritise the victims of impersonation

Started
9 February 2022
Petition to
Signatures: 78,361Next Goal: 150,000
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Why this petition matters

Started by Jamie Klingler

Last night I was alerted to a new Instagram account pretending to be me.  It was my name.  It was my pictures.  But on Instagram Stories it also included explicit pornographic videos pretending to be me.  It promised a website with something "a little more personal for the real supporters" and "naughty content".

The creator of that account was following men that followed my actual account, including my father.  Having a conversation with my dad and explaining that the porn being publicly shared wasn't of me was just as humiliating as you can imagine. As a women's safety campaigner and one of the founders of Reclaim These Streets; this was done to intimidate, embarrass and silence me.  

I immediately reported the account to Instagram as an impersonation of me and reported the account to the Metropolitan Police.  The Metropolitan Police contacted me before Instagram responded.  

1 hour later: it was still up.  2 hours later: it was still up.  3 hours later, you guessed it.  Still up.  

As a last resort, I was forced to use twitter to alert my followers to the abuse.

I asked them to help me collectively report it in order to get the account removed and it finally worked.  As the victim, I was forced to broadcast what had been done to me in order to have the account removed. 

I had to add to my own humiliation to make it stop.

Instagram's policy has never been to take down abusive or fraudulent accounts first and then investigate.  And why not?  Why aren't victims rights prioritised over scammers or abusers?  Instagram has a duty of care to its audience and should act on it.  It's a simple tech fix to put victim's rights ahead of those abusing people on the platform.  

Please join me if you think Instagram should immediately disable reported accounts and then have a moderator investigate the facts of the case rather than relying on volume of reporting in order to suspend accounts. 

Thank you for helping me to bring this issue to light and stop this from happening to other people.

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Signatures: 78,361Next Goal: 150,000
Support now
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