Toronto bakery keeps getting its posts about cookies blocked by Instagram
Innocent posts about cookies by a Toronto bakery keep getting blocked by Instagram, flagged for nudity, violence and promoting illegal substances.
Of course, Night Baker's posts don't do anything of the sort: the only addictive thing they're promoting is their chewy, puffy artisanal cookies that people in Toronto love.
The first few times Instagram flagged their posts for removing community guidelines, they figured it was a joke, or maybe an annoying prank. But as the violation notices kept coming, the situation became way less funny.
The situation started on Wednesday, owner Mitchell Cabrera notified that an Instagram story of an overhead shot of cookies violated guidelines. After laughing it off and posting a video, they got a notice for the video too.
At that point they clicked a button which allows you to contest the violation, but Night Baker hasn't gotten any feedback from Instagram.
When they got another notice the next day on Thursday, the stakes got a lot higher.
"This really started to worry us because the following prompt we got was that Instagram was about to delete our account unless we followed the guidelines," Cabrera tells blogTO.
"We had only been posting our usual normal wholesome things about cookies so we were really worried and confused about it. We were shown a prompt for this and only had a button saying OK and nowhere to contest the violation or explain ourselves."
Not being sure what to do, they pressed it, but again got no feedback from Instagram.
At that point, they decided to let their public know about the issue on their still-active account. Unlike Instagram, lots of real individuals came forward to offer them advice, but the best action Night Baker has been able to take is creating a backup account in case anything happens.
(Their current account is @thenightbakerto, and the backup account they've created is called @thenightbakercookies.)
A message Night Baker posted to their Instagram story.
"For now we've still not heard anything back from Instagram and hopefully we won't get anymore of those violations. We really don't know if it's someone messing with us, which we really hope not, or just an error with Instagram," says Cabrera.
"We just want Instagram to acknowledge us and see that we are just
a small bakery that makes cookies and nothing illicit, illegal let
alone anything with violence, nudity."
Hector Vasquez
