Why I'm quitting Instagram

On August 16th 2026 I took the incredibly difficult decision to quit Instagram after 10+ years in the platform. I'm NOT quitting dance photography, you will (hopefully) still see my pictures on dancers' feeds. 

Instagram helped me build DATW, but recently, it's become obvious that Instagram is not the right platform for the dance community. Big dancewear brands, big dance studios, small businesses, photographers and many many dancers have lost their accounts in the past 1 year.

In the past 14 months, my accounts got suspended a total of 5 times, and although I was always able to get them back, I decided not to go through the process this time.

I'll continue taking dance pictures. Locally, in Seattle area, anyone can contact me through the website form or to my email: Contact@DancersAroundTheWorld.com 

I'm still willing to travel anywhere in the US and Canada as long as there's a group of 6 people interested in booking a session, so if you get your friends together, find a date that works for everyone, then email me and we will make it happen.

Every day more people in the dance community are getting banned due to AI moderation rules. Two rules have been added to the moderation rules recently: 

• End of June they started scanning for saved posts. If any account went above their threshold (25) of saved posts that their AI rules considered inappropriate, or you had saved posts of accounts that were suspended, then your account would get suspended too. 

• End July they started scanning for likes and comments. I don't know what the threshold is for this one, but if your account had more comments or likes than the threshold on any accounts that have been (or get banned at any point in time), then your account gets suspended too.

This has created a snowball of accounts getting banned, then friends of that account would get banned, then the friends of friends and so on. Picture this: you see a picture of one of your friends and you want to be supportive, so you like it, comment on it and maybe even saved it. Then Instagram decides that they are wearing something inappropriate, so they get suspended, now your account is at risk. 

To me, this defeats the purpose of social media. The main thing that made Instagram great: the interaction and showing support to others, is what's bringing it down.

Instagram is basically saying: the more you interact with people, the higher the risk to get your account suspended.

So today, I decided that enough was enough. I'll try this without social media. It may, or it may not work. To me... this is a win win. If I can live in a world without toxic social media, while still doing what I love... great. If not, then I'll have free time to build an app for the dance community, and maybe I'll see you again there!

Thank you everyone for the amazing memories on Instagram!