A campaign calling on Instagram to take responsibility for user safety was stopped before it even reached the streets.
The billboard series, created by London agency Insiders, was intended to launch today as part of #IgnoredByInsta, a public push highlighting the growing number of scams, account takeovers and emotional fallout caused by the platform’s lack of human support. Outdoor media buyers refused to run the ads at the last minute, and their reason was unexpectedly blunt: Meta is a client.
Subverting Meta’s own glossy ads
The work itself is deliberately provocative, with Insiders borrowing the visual language of Instagram’s glossy ‘Anyway’ campaign, only to turn it on its head. Rather than sunlit scenes of creativity and confidence, the posters depict a bleaker reality familiar to anyone who has battled a hacked account.
Calm, aspirational layouts are replaced with glitchy distortions, fragments of threatening DMs and the kind of automated error messages that have become synonymous with Meta’s support process.
“We took the approach of ‘hacking’ one of Meta’s ads. It focuses on the human behind the hacking,” says Josh Clarricoats, founder of Insiders. He adds that the goal was to “resonate strongly with the people who have experienced it, and recognise the feeling and emotions we are portraying”.
Public pressure builds behind #IgnoredByInsta
The campaign was developed in partnership with Refundee, an organisation supporting scam victims, and has already caught public attention thanks to a Change.org petition demanding greater accountability from Instagram. Set up by scam victim Jonny Stanton, the petition outlines five measures the platform should adopt, including rapid human support, clearer reporting mechanisms and an immediate account-freeze option to stop scammers acting in real time.
Jonny knows the stakes all too well. “It’s extraordinary, the campaign is about how Big Tech ignores victims, and then Big Tech’s influence silences the campaign itself,” he says. He explains that his efforts began with a simple aim: “I simply want to make others aware of how easy it is to be scammed yet so difficult to get a response from Instagram, when you most need one.”
His reaction to the billboard rejection is wry but weary: “If raising awareness about scams is too controversial to advertise, we have a bigger problem than anyone realises.”
When the message becomes the story
For better or worse, that problem has now become part of the story. What began as a creative awareness initiative has evolved into a wider conversation about Big Tech’s influence on the advertising ecosystem.
According to Insiders, media buyers who had previously discussed locations and pricing later declined to run the campaign because they “don’t want to look like we’re supporting the message” and noted that “Meta is a client”. One decision in a boardroom has turned a design-led protest into a live example of the same power imbalance it was trying to critique.
The stakes extend beyond one set of posters. Stu McFadden, Co-founder of Refundee, warns that the consequences of Meta’s inaction are already spilling into the real world. “Every day, more people are being scammed or impersonated, and often the scammers start on social media. Victims are reporting through official channels and getting nowhere. Instagram’s lack of action has real-world consequences – and real victims.”
A failing system with real-world impact
The timing only sharpens the message, as the launch coincides with BBC Scam Safe Week, which encourages the public to stay alert to fraud and misinformation. Against that backdrop, the censorship of a safety campaign feels uncomfortably ironic.
Supporters argue that the campaign also highlights a fundamental gap between Instagram’s high-tech image and its crisis protocols. For a platform that handles identities, personal memories, relationships and even livelihoods, users expect a human response when something goes wrong.
Instead, they meet automated replies, circular help-centre links and no concrete route to reclaim stolen accounts. The petition argues this falls short of the UK’s Online Safety Act, which places a duty on platforms to keep users safe from harm.
Whether or not the billboards ever appear outdoors, #IgnoredByInsta has already achieved something unusual by turning Instagram’s silence into the headline – and the organisers hope that public pressure will do the rest.
