On Friday, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri addressed the recent issues affecting Instagram and Threads, which led to account deletions, lost posts, and other problems. In a thread, Mosseri explained that the company had “found mistakes” and attributed them to human moderators rather than AI systems, as some had speculated.
In a post on Threads, Mosseri stated that the errors originated from content reviewers who were “making decisions without the context of how conversations unfolded, which was a miss.” He reassured users that Instagram is working on solutions to minimize these mistakes.
Mosseri also mentioned in a comment on Threads that “one of the tools we built broke, which meant it wasn’t providing sufficient context.” He acknowledged, “That’s on us.”
Despite this clarification, some issues remain unclear. Many users reported their accounts were blocked and incorrectly labeled as belonging to users under 13 years old. Even after providing ID verification, some users stated they were unable to regain access to their accounts.
Instagram further noted that not all concerns stemmed from human errors and that cases of underage flagging were still under investigation.
Other users reported account disablement and noted that their posts were downranked or marked as spam despite being genuine and having many followers.
Former Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg pointed out a significant decline in activity on Threads, while social media strategist Matt Navarra highlighted a dramatic decrease in Threads’ follower growth and engagement.
Amid these challenges, Bluesky, another social networking competitor, took the opportunity to attract users by promoting its features on Threads.