I have gone back and forth about whether to share what happened to me on April 1, 2026. One day after my birthday, I woke up to an email from Instagram informing me that my account of 146,000 followers was suspended after receiving a third party copyright claim on a photo from 6 years ago. At first I thought it was spam, or maybe even an April Fool’s joke. Unfortunately, I quickly learned the email was legitimate when I opened the Instagram app to find my profile blank and an uncloseable pop up prompting me to log out of the now deactivated account.
At first I was in shock, as the rights owner stated “ColourPop Cosmetics LLC”. It had to be a mistake, as ColourPop is a brand I have been actively working with since 2019. At the time of the copyright strike, I had just received two packages from ColourPop and received another one several days later. In exchange for receiving the products, I’m required to share them on my social media, specifically Instagram. In fact, the majority if not all of my collaborations with ColourPop have been through Instagram as it was my biggest platform.
I later submitted an appeal to Instagram explaining how I believed this was all a misunderstanding and even attached proof of my contract with ColourPop. In true Meta fashion, their generic denial came in not even 12 hours later. Did an actual human review my appeal (as none of my points were addressed), or have they replaced that department with AI too? Below is their response:
I also emailed the copyright owner, seedbeauty-bp@redpoints.com and cc’ed my contact at ColourPop in the marketing department requesting a retraction of the strike. I never received a response. But then I did some digging.
Why was the copyright owner’s email @redpoints.com and not @seedbeauty.com? After a quick Google search, I learned that Red Points is an AI-powered software hired by brands to “remove counterfeits, fake websites, and ads across marketplaces and social media.” Their reviews not only speak for themselves, but echo exactly what happened to me.
Red Points uses automated bots to scan for copyright infringement across social media platforms and countless websites including: Amazon, eBay, Vinted, and more. Unfortunately, their system seems to be poorly built, reguularly sending DMCA takedown notices for URLS/Social Media that has nothing to do with copyrighted content. Many reviews expressed the same frustration I was feeling over this, including a recent one that summarized it perfectly:
I began to wonder if this was all happening for a reason. On the one hand, I felt I had to fight it; after all I had spent over 10 years creating content and building up my Instagram to reach 146,000 followers. The 3,000+ posts and highlight stories I worked so hard creating were no longer visible, disappearing into some Metaverse subfolder. On the other hand, I began to feel something I was not expecting: Relief.
Prior to losing my account, I felt constant pressure to not only consistently post on Instagram, but to create content that will produce high engagement. I felt like a slave to their self-serving algorithm, which punishes inactivity by hemorrhaging your follower count. In hindsight, it was time-consuming, unfulfilling, unproductive, and ultimately took time away from more lucrative outlets to share my content to. In fact, more paid opportunities have come my way after I refocused my energy into posting directly to my website and TikTok.
I know that content creation is a job at the end of the day, and I’m incredibly thankful for it. But unlike Instagram’s never-ending scroll, I feel the era of Instagram might actually be coming to an end.
