Mom's Innocent Photo of Her Toddler Causes Instagram to Shut Down Her Account

by Kaitlin Stanford

Mommy blogger Courtney Adamo's Instagram troubles have been making headlines since the weekend, after the admins over at the popular photo app deleted her account — and several years' worth of family photos in the process. Their reason? She had violated the community guidelines and posted "inappropriate" photos containing nudity.
But if you ask Adamo, Instagram has a very different idea of what "inappropriate" is.
Now, the deletion didn't come without some warning. Over the course of a week, the mom of four received five different emails from Instagram, telling her they had received reports from other users about her "inappropriate" images. The only catch? They didn't exactly tell her which photos were reported and deleted, or why they were deemed inappropriate to begin with. So she had to do her own digging.
"After a bit of research I discovered that if you receive too many reports of 'inappropriate' images, it sends a red flag to the Instagram team and their automated service will disable your account entirely, without warning and without notice," the blogger wrote on her website, Babyccino Kids.
Then finally, the night before her account was officially suspended, Adamo posted what she thought was a sweet photo of her young daughter, Marlow. In the photo, she's wearing a pair of bright yellow rain boots, while lifting her dress up over her belly to marvel at her belly button.

"I thought it was such a sweet photo of my baby girl and her gorgeous, round belly (and outie belly button)," Adamo wrote. "And I love that her pride is so evident in the photo — such a sweet and innocent shot of a successful day of potty-training."
In the morning, she awoke to another warning email. The photo, which she thought had been so sweet and innocent, was removed.
But she couldn't understand why. After re-reading Instagram's guidelines online and reviewing the photo, she was adamant that she had not actually violated the rules to begin with.

"Unless a baby's belly is considered 'nudity' … but surely it isn't!" she wrote. "She is a BABY! It's no different than a photo of a baby wearing a nappy, or a little boy in swim trunks, and to entertain the idea that it is even remotely inappropriate is a disgusting thing in itself."

Her next move? To repost the photo.
Needless to say, that was the last straw for Instagram, who then deleted her account all together. As she wrote on Babyccino, she was heartbroken to learn that four years of family photos and memories were gone, just like that.
Luckily for Adamo, her story quickly made the rounds, thanks to Twitter, and by June 23, BuzzFeed reports that her Instagram account was restored. They had made a mistake, they said, and were not above admitting that:
"We try hard to find a good balance between allowing people to express themselves and having policies to create and protect young children. This is one reason why our guidelines put limitations on nudity, but we recognize that we don't always get it right. In this case, we made a mistake and have since restored the account."
Adamo is, of course, thrilled to be back on Instagram. By the looks of things, she's posting away and glad to put the matter behind her.
At least there's a somewhat happy ending to this, after all.