Thea-Mai Baumann, an Australian artist and technologist, was told on 2 November that she had been “blocked” for pretending to be someone other than herself. This is what the New York Times reported first.
Five days earlier, Instagram’s parent company Facebook had rebranded itself as Meta.
Instagram refused to confirm to the NYT that the issue was related to the rebrand.
Virtual glamour
According to the paper, Ms. Baumann had created her Instagram account in 2012
It was said that she used @metaverse for her creative work as well as an augmented reality business, Metaverse Makeovers.
Its products include Metaverse Nails, which allow users to embellish themselves with virtual “glam”.
Her account had less than 1,000 followers on October 28th, the day before the Facebook rebrand. It currently has around 2,800.
However, she was hurt by the decision to close the account.
Ms Baumann said to the NYT that this account was a decade of her life and work.
“I did not want my contribution to metaverse to be erased from the internet.”
‘Tech bros’
She tried unsuccessfully to get the account restored, but Instagram only admitted her error after she was approached by the NYT a month later.
Instagram claimed that the account was removed incorrectly for “impersonation”, and told the NYT: “We are sorry this error occurred.”
Ms. Baumann says that she will make the experience art.
After a decade of working in the metaverse, she wanted to make it more inclusive and less dominated by Silicon Valley tech bros.
