Try again later error: we restrict

I got a try again later message last week. This day I had an amazing story with a lot of organic views. After attempting my 2nd time I got a block with a date. I feel like it was when blocked before when my post was trending. I had amazing reach with that as well. During these times I had people dming me left and right. Does anyone know if responding/reacting to a dm counts towards any limit? Could it have been that responding to people gave me this block. A side note is that I have been able to still respond both times during the blocks. Also does a vpn fix the try again later error? Thank you.

responding to DM’s should never be a problem because the users have initiated the conversation. it’s like 2 friends chatting throughout IG, IG will never limit you when doing that.