Why Instagram Is Banning OG Usernames

Last Thursday, Instagram unveiled another ban wave, in which hundreds of the internet giant’s pages were removed. 

Previously, the platform took down a large wave of meme pages. Afterward, it was basketball theme accounts. This time, however, the targets don’t always have high follower counts. In fact, they’re being banned because of their usernames. 

On Instagram, usernames are a form of currency. High-tier handles can scale to prices reaching 6 figures. Why? Because they’re rare. If a handle has below 4 characters or is a word (an example would be @boss), it likely has a lot of value. 

These usernames are extremely rare and were generally inaccessible by anyone who wasn’t part of Instagram’s first few thousand users. For context, the platform now amasses over 1 billion users, nearly 1/7th of the world population. 

OGusers.com is one forum in which these users are sold in a marketplace setting. While a very substantial chunk of these usernames likely wasn’t obtained in any illegal fashion, Instagram had previously conducted a month-long investigation into the site because of prior allegations, including the forum’s linkage to previous Twitter hacks, notably the Bitcoin scam in which the accounts of Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and others were illegally accessed.

Afterward, Instagram reported the banning of 400 rare accounts on the platform, following up on some by sending out a wave of cease and desist orders, noting that the banned users “cause harm to the Instagram community,” and allegedly obtained their handles in illegal and unethical ways.

As of now, Instagram is also threatening further formal legal action against some of the forum’s top users, and both TikTok and Twitter have seemingly begun taking action as well, with Twitter noting that their actions were done in tandem with Facebook’s investigation.