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.
"... My doctor, Dr Walter Wolfe then suggested, 'Jacee why don't you suit up and come deliver the baby.' I was in shock lol! I told her as long as Zack doesn't care go ahead and he said 'go for it Jacee!' She got suited up for delivery. Although the pain from the contractions and the pushing hurt me so bad... watching Jacee's expressions on her face were like no other. Concentrating on her face while I pushed helped me so much! Dr Wolfe actually put her hands on the inside of his and allowed her to do the entire delivery. We were all very emotional and it was like no feeling I've ever felt. it's not every day your eldest child at 12 years old gets to deliver your last child."
