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Instagram 'mistakenly' hijacks account, gives it to soccer star

Instagram 'mistakenly' hijacks account, gives it to soccer star

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Andrés Iniesta uses Instagram just like anyone else. "I am a father who likes to take pictures of his kids, yummy food, and interesting buildings," he wrote in a recent Medium post. But last week, he suddenly found his account suspended, with Instagram claiming that he'd somehow violated the company's terms of service with those family, food, and architecture photos. Iniesta found that a bit strange, and the situation only got more concerning when his Instagram presence was, without warning, replaced with another Andrés Iniesta — the professional footballer.

Iniesta tried reaching out to Instagram several times with no response from the company, even after his photos vanished and his username was handed off to someone else. But eventually Instagram made things right, restoring Iniesta's original account and forcing the soccer star over to another, slightly less desirable username. In a statement provided to Gizmodo, Instagram doesn't go into detail about how something like this managed to happen so quickly and without any clear or justifiable cause.

"We made a mistake here and restored the account as soon as we learned about it," the company said. "Our apologies go out to Mr. Iniesta for the trouble we caused him." So Iniesta doesn't hold the same fame, fortune, or follower count as the man who shares his name, but at least he's still got the better Instagram handle.