Well, there are multiple angles on that topic. One perspective could be, what is a smart thing to do. Another one could be, what can I get away with. Regarding image alteration, it depends on what niche are you in and how much your engagement will suffer from modifying the image.
If you want to start understanding what comparable algorithms are capable of you can take a look at:
There are multiple ways to throw off the algorithms, but considering that most of Instagramâs content is duplicates anyway, not sure if that is required on your part. If all of your accounts are hit, it might not even be related to the content, but to the fingerprint of your accounts. One option to be safer could be deleting old content. Safer, not safe
I also had something very odd happen to me today. Two days ago, I got a notification that a video that I posted 4 years ago supposedly has a copyright issue because the music track (not sure it even has music as itâs just someone talking) is owned by the BBC. I can submit a request to review it, just delete it, or Instagram will remove it in 7 days automatically. I donât actually care about the video post, so I just deleted it. Then, today, I was trying to post a carousel post and tagged a few accounts that I used as the source. I do this all the time and never had a problem. The post was completed but none of the caption went through, so it was completely empty. I tried adding it after but always got a red error message, saying there is a problem. So I deleted the post and tried again but instead of tagging all the accounts (max 15 accounts), I created a space between the @ and the username so that it doesnât actually tag. I had the same problem again and no text at all. I deleted that post again and tried fewer tags, same problem again. After deleting the post with no caption for the fourth time, I was able to complete the post with a little bit of text and zero tags. Then I posted a story of the same image with one tag. Then Instagram suddenly kicked me out of my account, so I had to log back in. Then my account wouldnât load, I couldnât see half of my app. I updated the app and I was able to see my profile again. Then I get a notification saying that my story was removed because of a âforbidden linkâ (I only tagged one account and thatâs it). I donât know if this is a weird bug or if my account was flagged for something, Iâm just worried that I canât really repost anymore and tag relevant accounts.
For full transparency, this account is 10 years old, I use it on my phone, no bot whatsoever, very little activity, maybe 5 posts per week and up to 10 messages per day.
It was a public account of a brand that gets tagged all the time. In fact, I noticed in my message history that I had already tagged that account at least 3 times over the years and never had a problem. I did think initially that I might have tagged an account that doesnât allow one or specifically me to tag them but I manually went through each account tagging them in the caption and Instagram always allowed it, so I donât think itâs related to that. The only thing I can think of, although thatâs still aggressive/odd is that I tagged an account (that I had tagged before) three times in the same caption. Perhaps Instagram flagged it as spam, so that you can only tag an account once.
