For 11-year-old Guangzhou boy Huang Zixuan, summer holiday is a good time to earn money — ¥18 (US$2.6) per Polaroid shot, ¥30 for two. Armed with his dad's old Instax camera, he sets up daily on Shamian Island, earning over ¥1,200 in a month.

Instagram update: Not looking good bruv. Their own support AI checked both accounts and said internally they weren’t even showing as disabled. It also couldn’t find the “finalised appeal” Instagram support had been claiming I submitted… Probably because I didn’t submit one. I wasn’t even given the option. It then flagged a “specialized enforcement state that requires manual intervention” and opened a specialist case. A human came in, said the bans were final, refused to tell me why because of “security reasons”, completely ignored the fact their own system said the records didn’t add up, then closed the case. Two accounts, nearly 100k followers, wiped within minutes of each other. So what’s actually happened here? None of this adds up.

instagram really changed their ui to make it harder to post content and easier to view randos videos/posts and buy shit. they are really doubling down on the parasocial one-influencer-to-many-fans dynamic that makes the app so bland and unengaging