Arab Press

بالشعب و للشعب
Friday, Jun 20, 2025

Her 10 years Instagram Handle Was ‘Metaverse.’ Last Month, It Vanished.

Her 10 years Instagram Handle Was ‘Metaverse.’ Last Month, It Vanished.

Five days after Facebook changed its name to Meta, an Australian artist found herself blocked, with seemingly no recourse, from an account documenting nearly a decade of her life and work.
In October, Thea-Mai Baumann, an Australian artist and technologist, found herself sitting on prime internet real estate.

In 2012, she had started an Instagram account with the handle @metaverse, a name she used in her creative work. On the account, she documented her life in Brisbane, where she studied fine art, and her travels to Shanghai, where she built an augmented reality company called Metaverse Makeovers.

She had fewer than 1,000 followers when Facebook, the parent company of Instagram, announced on Oct. 28 that it was changing its name. Henceforth, Facebook would be known as Meta, a reflection of its focus on the metaverse, a virtual world it sees as the future of the internet.

In the days before, as word leaked out, Ms. Baumann began receiving messages from strangers offering to buy her Instagram handle. “You are now a millionaire,” one person wrote on her account. Another warned: “fb isn’t gonna buy it, they’re gonna take it.”

On Nov. 2, exactly that happened.

Early that morning, when she tried to log in to Instagram, she found that the account had been disabled. A message on the screen read: “Your account has been blocked for pretending to be someone else.”

Whom, she wondered, was she now supposedly impersonating after nine years? She tried to verify her identity with Instagram, but weeks passed with no response, she said. She talked to an intellectual property lawyer but could afford only a review of Instagram’s terms of service.

“This account is a decade of my life and work. I didn’t want my contribution to the metaverse to be wiped from the internet,” she said. “That happens to women in tech, to women of color in tech, all the time,” added Ms. Baumann, who has Vietnamese heritage.

She started Metaverse Makeovers in 2012. When a phone running her app was held above one of the intricate real-world fingernail designs created by her team, the image on the screen would show holograms “popping” from the nails. This was before Pokémon Go, before Snapchat and Instagram filters became part of everyday life.

She saw the potential to scale the technology to clothing, accessories and beyond, but her investment money ran out in 2017, and she returned to the art world.

In the meantime, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, was investing heavily in his own futuristic vision of the metaverse — what he called “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.”

“The metaverse,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in announcing his company’s new name, “will not be created by one company.” Instead, he said, it will welcome a range of creators and developers making “interoperable” offerings.

Cory Doctorow, a tech blogger and activist, said this professed openness came with big caveats.

“He built Facebook by creating a platform where other businesses meet their customers,” Mr. Doctorow said, “but where Facebook structures the overall market, reserving to itself the right to destroy those businesses through carelessness, malice or incompetence.”

That vast power, governed by opaque policies and algorithms, extends to the company’s control over individual user accounts.

Facebook has essentially unfettered discretion to appropriate people’s Instagram user names,” said Rebecca Giblin, director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia at the University of Melbourne. “There can be good reasons for that — for example, if they’re offensive or impersonating someone in a way that causes confusion.”

“But the @metaverse example highlights the breadth of this power,” she said, adding that under Facebook’s policies, users “essentially have no rights.”

On Dec. 2, a month after Ms. Baumann first appealed to Instagram to restore her account, The New York Times contacted Meta to ask why it had been shut down. An Instagram spokesman said that the account had been “incorrectly removed for impersonation” and would be restored. “We’re sorry this error occurred,” he wrote.

Two days later, the account was back online.

The spokesman did not explain why it had been flagged for impersonation, or who it might have been impersonating. The company did not respond to further questions about whether the blocking had been linked to Facebook’s rebranding.

Now that her account has been resurrected, Ms. Baumann plans to fold the saga into an art project she started last year, P∞st_Lyfe, which is about death in the metaverse. She’s also considering what she can do to help ensure that the metaverse becomes the inclusive place she said she had tried to help build.

“Because I have been working in the metaverse space for so long, 10 years, I just feel worried,” she said. She fears, she added, that its culture could be “corrupted by the kind of Silicon Valley tech bros who I feel lack vision and integrity.”
Comments

Ken 4 year ago
Jews have been stealing what they want for years its in their DNA. It is no wonder they have been kick out of so many countries

Newsletter

Related Articles

Arab Press
0:00
0:00
Close
16 Billion Login Credentials Leaked in Unprecedented Cybersecurity Breach
Senate hearing on who was 'really running' Biden White House kicks off
G7 Leaders Fail to Reach Consensus on Key Global Issues
Mass exodus in Tehran as millions try to flee following Trump’s evacuation order
Iranian Military Officers Reportedly Seek Contact with Reza Pahlavi, Signal Intent to Defect
China's Iranian Oil Imports Face Disruption Amid Escalating Middle East Tensions
Trump Demands Iran's Unconditional Surrender Amid Escalating Conflict
Israeli Airstrike Targets Iranian State TV in Central Tehran
President Trump is leaving the G7 summit early and has ordered the National Security Council to the Situation Room
Netanyahu Signals Potential Regime Change in Iran
Analysts Warn Iran May Resort to Unconventional Warfare
Iranian Regime Faces Existential Threat Amid Conflict
Energy Infrastructure Becomes War Zone in Middle East
Iran Conducts Ballistic Missile Launches Amid Heightened Tensions with Israel
Iran Signals Openness to Nuclear Negotiations Amid Ongoing Regional Tensions
Shock Within Iran’s Leadership: Khamenei’s Failed Plan to Launch 1,000 Missiles Against Israel
UK Deploys Jets to Middle East Amid Rising Tensions
Exiled Iranian Prince Reza Pahlavi Urges Overthrow of Khamenei Regime
Wreck of $17 Billion San José Galleon Identified Off Colombia After 300 Years
Iran Launches Extensive Missile Attack on Israel Following Israeli Strikes on Nuclear Sites
Israel Issues Ultimatum to Iran Over Potential Retaliation and Nuclear Facilities
Coinbase CEO Warns Bitcoin Could Supplant US Dollar Amid Mounting National Debt
Trump to Iran: Make a Deal — Sign or Die
Operation "Like a Lion": Israel Strikes Iran in Unprecedented Offensive
Israel Launches 'Operation Rising Lion' Targeting Iranian Nuclear and Military Sites
Israeli Forces Intercept Gaza-Bound Aid Vessel Carrying Greta Thunberg
IMF Warns of Severe Global Trade War Impacts on Emerging Markets
Syria to Reconnect to Global Economy After 14 Years of Isolation
Saudi Arabia Faces Uncertainty Over Succession After Mohammed bin Salman
Israel Confirms Arming Gaza Clan to Counter Hamas Influence
Majority of French Voters View Macron's Presidency as a Failure
U.S. Reduces Military Presence in Syria
Trump Demands Iran End All Uranium Enrichment in Nuclear Talks
Iran Warns Europe Against Politicizing UN Nuclear Report
Businessman Mauled by Lion at Luxury Namibian Lodge
Paris Saint-Germain's Greatest Triumph Is Football’s Lowest Point
OPEC+ Agrees to Increase Oil Output for Third Consecutive Month
Turkey Detains Istanbul Officials Amid Anti-Corruption Crackdown
Meta and Anduril Collaborate on AI-Driven Military Augmented Reality Systems
EU Central Bank Pushes to Replace US Dollar with Euro as World’s Main Currency
European and Arab Ministers Convene in Madrid to Address Gaza Conflict
Head of Gaza Aid Group Resigns Amid Humanitarian Concerns
U.S. Health Secretary Ends Select COVID-19 Vaccine Recommendations
Trump Warns Putin Is 'Playing with Fire' Amid Escalating Ukraine Conflict
India and Pakistan Engage Trump-Linked Lobbyists to Influence U.S. Policy
U.S. Halts New Student Visa Interviews Amid Enhanced Security Measures
Trump Administration Cancels $100 Million in Federal Contracts with Harvard
SpaceX Starship Test Flight Ends in Failure, Mars Mission Timeline Uncertain
King Charles Affirms Canadian Sovereignty Amid U.S. Statehood Pressure
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Founder Warns Against Trusting Regime in Nuclear Talks
×