I had an account in 2023 and it one day asked me to upload the selfie with the paper. Literally the second I hit submit it returned within a microsecond to say I was now permanently banned.

I was tempted to pay a Meta employee with this one, but the going rate is about $500-2000 right now. And it's too late because I took the gamble of trying to appeal it. Once you appeal and lose Meta employees can just use the internal ticket system to get it back. It's a more convoluted process and usually they want $5-10K to do it at that point.

Instagram is blocked in Russia so everyone here uses it through some sort of VPN. No one I know has ever got banned for that.

I lost my 10 years old account this way after being flagged about 2-3 times due to travel.

My account really isn't that important but still makes my blood boil at the time.