Instagram user @metaverse had an account banned last month that showed a decade of her life and work after Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta.
On October 28, Facebook, the owner of Instagram, retained the social media platform, but changed its brand name to Meta, signaling efforts to mirror the virtual world that the tech giant sees in the future of the Internet.
On November 2, Australian artist and technologist Tea-Mai Baumann suddenly saw her account deactivated. Tea-Mai Baumann claimed to have received a message on her account that said, “Your account has been suspended for pretending to be someone else.” Baumann said that in the following weeks he tried to verify his identity on Instagram, but received no response.
“This report is a decade of my life and my work. I didn’t want my contributions to the metaverse to be erased from the internet, which happens to women in technology, especially women of color, ”added the artist, who is of Vietnamese descent.
Baumann started her Instagram account in 2012 to document her life as an arts student in Brisbane and the augmented reality company she created called Metaverse Makeovers.
A month after Baumann first took to Instagram to request that his account be restored, the New York Times contacted Meta on December 2 and asked why Baumann’s account had been closed. According to an Instagram spokesman, the account was “incorrectly deleted due to fake personal data,” but his account was restored two days later.
“We are sorry that this error has occurred,” the company added.
Even though his account is back, Bauman remains concerned about the future of the metaverse, a still hypothetical virtual world accessible through dedicated virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology.
“Having worked in metaverse space for so long, no doubt 10 years, I am very excited.” She fears that her culture might be “tainted by people from Silicon Valley techies who lack vision and integrity,” she said.
A source: Daily mail
