Sorry for the delay, but something happened on November 16-18 that deserves special mention. Around that time, Instagram issued widespread restrictions on accounts that had knife content. Makers, retailers, hobbyists, and reviewers were all hit by these restrictions. I was lucky in that I avoided them. I’ll explain how, I think, later. Lots and lots of concerns were raised and I wanted to situate them in a better context. Hopefully, this will explain what’s happening, how to make the best of it, and why social media is terrible.

One thing I saw a lot were posts claiming that Instagram was violating people’s right to free speech. This is wrong. You do not have a right to free speech. You have the right to be free from government restrictions on your speech. That is all the Constitution has ever promised you. Since Instagram is not a government entity it can restrict your speech as much as it wants on its platforms. If you don’t like that, become a shareholder. Those are the only people Instagram’s parent company Meta gives a shit about. Don’t whine. Don’t throw around hyperbole. And don’t talk about your phony free speech rights. Buy stock.

Second, let’s make clear what Instagram is. Like all social media it is an avenue to sell ads and gather data. The feature whereby they host your posts is secondary. Ad views and your personal data are the products made by Instagram. The hosting of your posts is like the sweet smell and vibrant colors produced by flowers—they are there merely to attract bees that pollinate other flowers. If Instagram could get ad revenue without hosting, they would. This is market driven capitalism at its finest. For a group of liberty-minded folks, the knife community seems to have quickly forgotten this lesson.

Third, your posts on Instagram, on any other social media, are not your property. All of the end user agreements make it clear that once you post something, it becomes the property of the hosting entity. If you don’t want Instagram to steal your images or restrict what you can post, you need to go to a different platform. The AFOL MOC (Adult Fan of Lego, My Own Creations) community, for example, uses Flickr. By posting Flickr pictures on blogs, they get around one central authority, like Instagram, restricting their content without their permission. If we want to avoid the Shadowban Hammer forever, we need to do something like this.

Its important to me to note that makers are in a slightly different position than hobbyists. They need Instagram to survive. But their financial interests in having their business shown off through Instagram directly competes with Instagram’s business model of having people PAY for ad revenue. Its sad, but I think this is inevitable. It would be nice if Istagram had protected accounts for a few bucks more, but I think that would be a hassle to administer.

The problem with trusting a company to do the right thing is that companies, under the logic of capitalism, could give two shits about what the right thing is if that right thing has nothing to do with profits. So we really have a few options—buy shares and engage in corporate advocacy as a shareholder, change our community’s social presence online, or engage in politics to reform the situation.

There are some other ideas, but these are dependent on the algorithm, which, in case you have never tried to get information about, is basically the #1 Top Secret item for all of these social media companies. I rarely post pictures of my knives open. In looking through all of those that got banned, many of them were showing knives opened ALL THE TIME. So you might stand a better chance of avoiding the Ban Hammer if you keep your knives closed. Second, mix up the content. While most of my IG stuff is knife and gear related, I do post other things, and I think that might impact the algorithm a bit, too. Finally, I think if you have hunting content, or anything that shows blood or guts, you might make it more likely that you get hit with the Ban Hammer. Maybe make a second account for that kind of content.

In the end, I think it is unfortunate that IG did what they did to the knife community, but it is not illegal or unsurprising. And users complaining about it will make no difference. We don’t provide direct revenue to Instagram, only a small drop of content in a sea of content that drives ads. I think it is probably time that we migrate somewhere else. Instagram as an app is pretty shitty. It doesn’t do a lot of stuff well, like hyperlinking to web pages. It is entirely up to some rando person or machine to decide what is fair and what is not. And that level of control always bothers me. If anyone has ideas, I’ll listen.