Instagram Deleted Your Account? Here's What We Actually Learned (and What We Didn't) While Getting our IG back

A (unfortunately not as helpful as you’d probably like it to be) guide for pole dancers, strippers, and SWers, from the RLT family. <3

Why we're writing this

We keep getting the same DM: "my Instagram just got deleted, what do I do??" So instead of answering the same question one message at a time (also we are scared to even talk about it via dms with Metas robots watching) here's everything we know in one place.

TLDR: we don't have a magic fix. We wish we did. What we have is our honest experience, what other people in our community have shared, and some resources /tips that may be worth your time.

What happened to us

In early June 2026, every RLT Instagram account got banned: business, personal, and backups. It took months, and in September 2026 our accounts came back.

Unfortunately, we have no idea what it was that finally worked.

What we tried

• Working with a reinstatement service (we're linking it below as a resource, but we can't say it's what got us back)

• Having our admin buy verification on a separate account to try to get support to escalate

• Looking in Reddit threads for advice

• Asking everyone we knew for private Meta contacts

Honest answer: none of it helped, as far as we can tell. We got our accounts back, and as far as we can tell it was pure luck. From everything we've read, a lot of this seems to come down to luck and whatever Meta's internal review queue decides on a given day.

What we'd tell a friend

1. Keep your appeal active and document everything. Save your case ID, screenshots, dates, and every email or notification.

   1. Bonus - Report censorship details HERE

2. Don't pour all of yourself into it. We lost a LOT of time and sanity fighting something we had no real control over. Save some energy for the stuff you can build.

3. Build your other channels now. Email list, WhatsApp, YouTube, a backup account. If all your backups keep getting deleted, don’t make more! Build an email list instead. Spend your energy on things that are worth your time. Even with our accounts back, we will never rely on IG like we used to. It simply isn’t sustainable or realistic.

4. Make it easy for people to find you elsewhere. Business cards, website, email list, blogs, etc!!! Get your booking info and contact details somewhere easy for your target audience to find!

The part nobody wants to say out loud

Sex workers, strippers, and pole dancers have been dealing with disabled accounts and shadowbanning for years, often even when they're following the rules. Instagram doesn't care about pole dancers, SWers (or anyone smaller than they are really), and Meta will probably never change that. But it's also where our whole community lives. So we're stuck between two bad options: collectively leave, or stay and accept the consequences that come with it.

Leaving isn't simple either! If our audience isn't on another platform, there's not much point spending energy marketing there, and we can't make people download something new just because we want them to.

Unfortunately, we don't have a clean answer. What we can say is that treating Instagram as borrowed space, not a foundation, changes how much a ban/deletion can take from you. Keep building the places you own, and support platforms that are trying to do better.

Resources

• Redd Light Therapy (RLT) — a stripper-led virtual community made by working dancers with LOTS of different ways for SWers and dancers to connect, find others living similar lives, get advice, talk to other SWers, learn, and more. reddlighttherapy.com/links

• Repro Uncensored — the reinstatement service we worked with. Donation based. We don't attribute our reinstatement to them directly, but worth a shot as we have heard of many successful reinstatements through their orginization. https://www.reprouncensored.org/report-censorship

• Sssion — a platform being built by a pole dancer and tech founder for the pole and SW community, designed to not rely on Instagram or deal with shadowbanning. https://sssion.studio

• Hacking//Hustling — a collective of sex workers, survivors, and accomplices working at the intersection of tech and social justice. Their report Posting Into the Void looks at how shadowbanning and content moderation affect sex workers and activists. https://hackinghustling.org // https://hackinghustling.org/resources/

• Blogger On Pole — pole dancer, researcher, and activist who has written about Instagram's treatment of pole dancers and sex workers. https://bloggeronpole.com // https://bloggeronpole.com/2025/12/meta-censorship-changes/

• Reddit — we're not linking specific threads because none we found have real answers… but it can help to see you're not alone. Try searching: "Instagram account disabled appeal," "Instagram banned sex worker," "Instagram disabled pole dancer," "Instagram community standards no appeal," "Meta disabled account reinstated" for more.

Found something else that helped you? Comment below!!! Links, advice, connections, whatever you've got! We're all figuring this out together, and the more we share, the less any of us has to start from scratch.