After being banned from multiple platforms earlier this month, conservative commentator and two-time Purple-Heart winner Joe Biggs has now been permanently banned from Instagram. Instagram says Biggs was banned for violating its terms but hasn’t specified how he supposedly violated these terms.
https://twitter.com/hollandcourtney/status/1156643946212102144
While Instagram hasn’t provided a reason for the ban, Biggs did say in an interview last week that the account was being targeted as part of a mass flagging campaign and that many innocuous photos such as pictures of him with his pet dog were being removed for supposedly violating Instagram’s terms of service. Biggs added that the mass flagging had forced him to make his Instagram account private and carefully scan potential followers before allowing them to follow his page.
Instagram recently removed cosplayer Belle Delphine’s account after a mass flagging campaign so given the information Biggs’ shared in this interview, it’s possible that his account suffered the same fate as Delphine’s.
Biggs’ Instagram ban comes less than a week after his PayPal and Venmo accounts were suspended for supposedly violating their user agreements. It also follows his Shopify account being banned for “hate speech” and his Twitter account being suspended shortly after it was mysteriously unverified.
In addition to this, the removal of Biggs’ Instagram account follows several recent developments which have suggested that it’s becoming an increasingly hostile platform for creators. Last week, multiple meme accounts with millions of followers were purged from the platform. Earlier this year, Instagram also announced that it will start “fact-checking” memes and shadowbanning what it describes as “borderline content.”
While Biggs has been purged from many social media platforms and payment services, he still has accounts on Facebook, Telegram, and Parler for now.
