Mark Duffy

NAME: Mark Duffy
PLATFORM & USERNAME: Instagram @markduffyphotography
CENSORSHIP: Shadow ban

What reason was given for your ban?

None, I’ve never gotten a response from Instagram.

Why do you think your post(s) was censored?

It’s an addiction machine. I had what I call a Slipstream effect applied to my page.

How this theory works is, they see your page is performing well, they open it up to all for your page to get a good chance of growing. You’ve 9 months to get your following as high as you can, I got to 30,000 followers in that time back in 2017. I was posting twice a day, lunchtime behind the scenes photos, 8 pm final photo and averaging 5k likes per BTS photo and 3k likes per final photo, a total of 8k likes per day with 10k views per story.

26th January 2018, that all stopped, no longer could I post multiple times in a day, engagement dropped to 2k likes per day, stories dropped to under 2k views and never went back up.

This was all to build my addiction for the app and want to pay for ads to increase the performance again. I’ve witnessed the same thing to other pages who got past 100k followers and suddenly one day their engagement drops to 1/3 what it had been doing.

Right now I have 45,000 followers I lose the same number of followers I gain per day and cuz they want to push reels my posts barely get to 1k likes, the reach is tiny, I get more reach with my 14k followers on Facebook.

Were you able to appeal and what was the response?

Appeal what, how can you prove this?

They banned all Irish users from seeing the number of likes on posts, I could only see my numbers in insights.

What effect has your experience of censorship had on you?

It’s made me frustrated and more obsessive to improve and really stand out from the crowd to then never achieve it as my posts don’t get seen.

What’s one thing you want people to know about this topic?

Instagram was fun, it got me into photography and I turned my hobby into my full-time career.

Take note of what gets pushed and seen more on Instagram, influencers half-naked and pointless reels yet nude photographers get banned and talented creatives get squashed and held back. Their moral compass is backwards.