Cain Press. Suspended on Instagram by an offended user.

On January 8, 2022, the Instagram account of Cain Press, a Colombian independent publisher, was suspended for reasons that Instagram did not explain when applying the sanction. 

Although it is a business dedicated to the sale and promotion of books, Cain Press has employed the strategy of gaining visibility on social media with memes that sometimes touch on political issues. In this way, they have managed to consolidate a base of almost 80,000 followers. 

Due to the controversial nature of the content it publishes, the account frequently receives reports from users who feel offended. However, most of the time the reported content is not removed from the platform, as it does not violate community standards. 

Shortly before the sanction, a user had written to them internally to insult them for one of their publications. Given the aggressiveness of the message, the Cain Press administrator took a screenshot and published it in a story to clarify that, although the account was open to dialogue, it did not tolerate such attacks. Immediately, they received a barrage of notifications of user reports against several of their publications. 

In the following days, the account began to have fewer interactions. From receiving thousands of likes per post, they went to a few dozen. To try to solve this problem, known as shadow banning - wherethe platform decides to remove visibility from an account for different reasons - they wrote to Instagram in search of a solution, but never got a response.

Shortly thereafter, the account was suspended. According to Instagram, they had violated "many rules," although they were not told which ones or for what content. Cain Press, with the help of Circuito, sent an appeal explaining their project and arguing that their posts often included elements of satire, one of the exceptions to several of Facebook's policies. A couple of hours later they regained access to the account. 

Upon having the account back, the owners of Cain Press decided not to post anything in the following days, following a personal recommendation. However, there is no rule published in Instagram or Meta policies that suggests any reason not to return to using an account normally after a sanction.