These Things Could To Get Your Instagram Account Deleted + How to Protect Your Content
*Disclaimer: we are not lawyers and this is not to be considered legal advice. The goal of this article is to keep your Instagram accounts safe and help you protect your content from being used without your consent*
When was the last time you found a cute image on Instagram, tapped that save button to regram later, then carefully regramed with the proper credit to the original content creator, thinking we’re doing the right thing?
No harm, right?
Or maybe you source an all quote feed from Pinterest, but take the time to add your unique branding to create your one Instagram quotes?
Still fair game?
Nope.
One day you can wake up to not having an Instagram account, just like that.
According to Instagram Terms of Use, we are not allowed to post content we don’t own. That includes posts on feed, adding a photo to Instagram Stories, using someone else’s video or TikTok’s in your stories or as a Reel, etc.
Here’s a screenshot of Instagram Intellectual property section of the terms and conditions, that includes Copyright and Trademark.
Screenshot from Instagram’s Terms of Use
In Instagram’s own words, as you can see below:
“About Intellectual Property
Instagram is committed to helping people and organizations protect their intellectual property rights. The Instagram Terms of Use do not allow posting content that violates someone else’s intellectual property rights, including copyright and trademark.
Copyright
Copyright is a legal right that seeks to protect original works of authorship (example: books, music, film, art).
Generally, copyright protects original expression such as words or images. It does not protect facts and ideas, although it may protect the original words or images used to describe an idea. Copyright also doesn’t protect things like names, titles and slogans; however, another legal right called a trademark might protect those.
Learn more about reporting copyright violations.
Trademark
A trademark is a word, slogan, symbol or design (example: brand name, logo) that distinguishes the products or services offered by one person, group or company from another. Generally, trademark law seeks to prevent confusion among consumers about who provides or is affiliated with a product or service.
Learn more about reporting trademark violations.”
Make Sure You Avoid These Things Not To Get Your Instagram Account Deleted
Here are a few of the things that could get your Instagram posts taken down or even your account deleted entirely:
Using Images or quotes you found on Google or Pinterest (they belong to someone)
Regraming without the written authorization of the original creator you are reposting from (yes, even if your store or brand is in the photo, that doesn’t give you the rights to use it).
Copying someone else’s brand like their color palette, design elements, font combinations, etc
Copying or regraming someone else’s captions as your own or without their consent, as words are also subject to copyright.
Important to note that this excludes sharing someone’s posts to stories, as this feature links the content to the original creator and makes it clear it’s someone else’s.
This means that a lot of common practices many Instagram accounts, big and small, use today infringe Instagram Terms and Copyright Laws.
But why are there so many accounts that do this and don’t get taken down?
Could be one of the reasons below:
they haven’t got reported yet
some of their posts get reported and taken down, but we don’t see it happening
they are getting singular posts reported and not the whole account
they haven’t gotten reported enough to be taken down.
I know whole accounts get taken down often, like it just happened to a friend of mine who had an account with almost 70k followers and got taken down from using quotes from Pinterest. But many still get away with it because of one of these reasons:
creators get intimidated about complaining when they get credited or tagged,
creators never find out that certain accounts are using their content as their own,
creators don’t think they have the rights to that material
creators don’t know how to file a copyright infringement on Instagram
So we recommend you create your own content, work with content creators, photographers, writers or buy templates. Just make sure you only use content you have the rights to.
Now if your content, images, videos or captions has ever been used or regrammed by other accounts on Instagram without your consent, this is what you recommend you do, in this order:
take screenshots and save the links for your record before taking any action
send them a polite DM asking them to take it down, maybe it was an honest mistake
if they don’t comply (many times they will even block you), then you can fill out a copyright infringement using this form.
Remember this needs to be your original work.
There are many other ways to violate Instagram terms, like selling or buying an Instagram account or handle or even using Instagram or Insta in your account or products names, but these will be a conversation for another day.
Meanwhile, I recommend you stay familiar with Instagram and Facebook’s terms of use that you agreed to when you started your account, to keep your account safe and play fair with those who put a lot of knowledge, work and effort into creating content.
Need help creating your content? We have amazing Canva templates for Instagram that you can customize for any niche, no matter if you’re a product based brand, a service provide, a personal brand or a expert or coach.
Manu Muraro is the founder of Your Social Team, an Instagram training membership and content shop to help social media managers and Instagram savvy women entrepreneurs to beat the algorithm and grow their organic engagement (yes, even in 2021). This year she also launched Your Template Club, a Canva Template subscription to provide social media managers and Instagram savvy business owners with content template designed for engagement in their inbox.
Born and raised in Brazil, Manu moved to the U.S. in 2000 right out of college to work for Cartoon Network, where she made an award winning career in creative and strategy. In 2017, Manu started Your Social Team with the mission of helping women entrepreneur and social media managers grow engagement and sales through Instagram without the overwhelm.