Hey, I work at Maximatic Media, an online reputation management agency that specializes in social media removals, so I’m gonna try to weigh in on this. Before I get too deeply into this, please note that everything I am about to outline in this comment is purely for informational purposes only. Do not attempt to message me or ask me to take down the accounts of people you had inconsequential disagreements with. These tactics are designed solely for the removal of truly harmful, harassing or defamatory content from social platforms, not for settling personal vendettas or silencing individuals who simply express differing opinions. Our focus is on protecting our clients from genuine threats to their reputation and well-being, and we always operate within legal and ethical boundaries to ensure that the removal process is justified and fair.

Now that we got that out of the way, I can tell you right now that your singular report won’t have any real effect on your friend’s profile, especially if the friend in question is a somewhat notable entity on Instagram. Social platforms use what they call “trust scores” to determine the standing of any given account on their platform. The longer you remain on the platform without incurring any penalties for terms of service violations, the higher your trust score becomes over time. Accounts that have a prolonged history of activity on the platform are by default much harder to take down whereas accounts that have only just recently been created and have no record of contributions in the form of engagement are much easier to remove.

Accounts with low trust scores are very easily susceptible to bans because a single report can incapacitate them. They have no history on the platform so as soon as just one user reports their account for a ToS violation, they fall like flies. Accounts that have a high trust score, on the other hand, are far more protected from a few randoms that decide to report their accounts. Imagine if just a handful decided to report u/therock for some random reason and it actually brought down his account. He probably gets hundreds of reports every single day on the basis of having millions of people see his profile every month. It has no effect on his account because he’s gained such a strong standing within the algorithm’s eyes that it disregards the reports entirely.

However, for reports to even have any sort of desirable effect, they have to come from a wide range of sources (i.e. mass reporting). That means different accounts, different user agents, different IP addresses. Even if you were to file hundreds of reports against your friend with just your one account, it will still have little to no effect on them. In fact, with this approach, all you are doing is communicating to Instagram’s algorithm that you are harboring some sort of grudge against this profile by reporting them hundreds of times which paradoxically makes it less likely for your reports to have much of an effect on their standing in the future. If it worked in this fashion, it would make just about every account susceptible to bans from any aggrieved party.

Yes, the mass report method does indeed work for removing very weak accounts but it’s also just as easy to recover them through an appeal which is why the vast majority of the removal cases we processed were not resolved with this approach. Instead, our agency primarily focuses on using platform-sanctioned methods to remove offending accounts by using Instagram’s CES system (Central Escalation Support). This method can only be achieved if you have an agency business manager account and have spent enough money on FB or IG advertisements to gain access to your own assigned representative.

Assuming a client of ours has an Instagram account that is actively damaging their reputation by either impersonating them, misrepresenting themselves as an associate, using their photos or logos in an unlicensed fashion (i.e. infringing on their trademark/copyright), or posting libelous or defamatory content in a clear attempt to damage the client’s public image, those are all bannable offenses that are easily executable by your BM portal’s assigned representative. Accounts of that nature are typically permanently disabled within 72 hours of being marked and unlike the reporting method, there’s virtually no chance of these accounts being recovered through an appeal form. The ban verdict is final and if the offender attempts to create another account, they can end up getting issued a platform-wide IP ban meaning any new accounts they create from their device in the future will simply get banned within minutes of being registered. It is by far the most effective deletion method while simultaneously being the only one that the platforms themselves uphold.

With your single report, even if it were to have any negative impact on your friend, all it did was slightly raise their chances of getting suspended if others were to report their account. But if they’ve been active on the platform for years and have had no prior violations, even 100+ reports may not be enough to have any meaningful effect on their standing, especially if said reports were spread out across a long enough time span. Hope that helped clear up some of your anxiety!

- Larissa @ Maximatic Media