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paranoidrobotyesterday at 10:24 PM0 repliesview on HN

Instagram did a similar thing for me back in 2016-ish.

A family member had been sharing some photos they were taking, but only on Instagram.

So I signed up an account, verified via email and phone number. I wasn't initially able to find the family member's account. A week later after I got the spelling of their username right, Instagram popped up "Your account has been suspended". They then sent me an email saying I needed to take a photo of myself holding government ID, and a piece of paper with a hand-written code they supplied, plus a close-up photo of said government ID. No way was I supplying all that just to be able to browse some photos.