That time when I got back my Instagram account by sending Facebook a letter

It was 2016. Back then, Instagram was an invaluable tool for dating. I never used Tinder much, because Instagram was the bomb.

At the time, I had two accounts: one was my main, the other was a throwaway profile I used to test… things (auto-liking bots to increase my followers count, mainly: I wrote more about that here). One day, Instagram’s alert systems flagged me, and I was thrown out from both accounts. They thought I was spamming, and in all honesty I kinda was — spamming yours truly in the dating market, that is. They asked me to verify my identity; fair enough. It was an easy are-you-a-human challenge, where I just had to write a confirmation code they sent me over email in a text box.

I opened the email, and I found two things. First, the code. Then, a very long link. Oh, easy — I thought. Instead of making me write the code on my own, they made it handy to confirm it with a link. Usual UX pattern, seen thousands of times. I tapped the link.

Now, I have absolutely no idea why anyone would want to even support such an option in the first place. Especially in a message that is all about confirming my email. It’s like going to a person with a problem, and offering them both a solution, and a way to make their problem utterly irreparable. And to top it off, to make the two options perversely similar so you can get confused.

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