One moment you’re posting on social media, the next the platform pulls the plug on your profile and everything disappears. 😱
What do you do? Do you get on your knees and beg them to reactivate your account, or do you realize you have zero control over what you build on social networks and that you should probably be doing something different?
Something like that happened to me this week. Threads suspended the accounts I had on Meta’s platform and reminded me that I’ve been neglecting something very important.
Something I created 21 years ago!
I Was Against Social Networks
The first time I made a social media account was on Facebook in 2009. Even back then, I resisted the idea of opening a Facebook account.
At that time, most people were creating profiles to find old classmates and friends. I had no need to do that.
I had already started my personal blog four years earlier, and I shared whatever I wanted inside my own space.
But in 2009 I understood the power of social media. I started realizing that Facebook could be a way to drive people to my personal blog.
And as I was taking my first steps in social media marketing, I decided to open a Facebook account.
In reality, my audience was already on my personal blog.
I didn’t see Facebook as something new where I would build a brand-new audience. It was simply a way to promote what I was already writing on my blog.
So back in those early social media days — which have nothing to do with how things work now — I wasn’t worried at all about losing the audience I was starting to build on Facebook, and later on Twitter and Instagram.
Damn Facebook
The first time I realized I was vulnerable building a brand on social networks was when, overnight, Facebook shut down a page I had created for a blog about gambling that I had started around that time.
By then I had understood the importance of social media marketing, so for every blog I launched, I would simultaneously create pages on Facebook and Twitter.
That page I had made for the gambling blog had attracted quite a bit of interest. There was even a post I made that a future Greek government minister commented on and shared.
So yeah, that page had gotten some real attention. I never expected Facebook to suddenly terminate it — and without any explanation.
I couldn’t do anything about it, even when I asked for a review. Within hours, I got the automated message from Facebook saying their decision was final and I would never get access to that blog’s page on Facebook again.
The shock was obviously huge.
All the posts I had made were gone. But even more importantly, I could no longer reach the thousands of people who were following that page. Not only had I lost the audience, but I had zero control over the page.
From that moment on, Facebook became the black sheep for me.
Because of that experience, I never trusted it again — even though I later created pages and profiles on other Meta platforms, like Threads.
But I always had in the back of my mind that what happened to me on Facebook could happen at any moment on any social network.
It was a lesson I learned very early in my social media career, and I’ve never forgotten it. And Meta made sure to remind me of it again this week by shutting down both of my personal Threads accounts.
Threads: “We’re Deleting Your Account”
I usually wake up very early in the morning, sometimes even before 5.
So that morning I opened my eyes around 4:30, and like always, the first thing I did was grab my phone to see what had happened overnight with everything I’m building.
I imagine, like most people, I check my email first thing in the morning! 📨
The two most recent emails I had were from Threads.
“Huh! That’s weird!” I thought, since I rarely get emails from them.
I didn’t even have to open the emails. The first two lines already told me that Threads had shut down both of my accounts.
“Sorry,” they said, “but you no longer have access to your Threads page.” That’s what the emails said.
When I opened the two emails — one in Greek and one in English — they both said exactly the same thing.
They claimed my pages weren’t following Threads’ guidelines. That all the content I had posted would be deleted, and that if I wanted, I could submit an appeal.
Here we go again, I thought.
Given my history with Facebook, I knew that whatever I did would probably be pointless. Still, I went into my Threads accounts, hit the appeal button, and Threads told me I’d get an answer within an hour.
But I was still keeping my expectations low.
Honestly, I had zero hope I could reverse their decision.
Even so, I didn’t do anything until I got the response from Threads about both accounts.
To my surprise, they immediately restored my English profile after I submitted the review request. At the same time, though, they told me the decision on my Greek profile was final and that they would now completely delete my account. 😱
So, with the sun already up, I started disconnecting my Threads account from the other tools I use to cross-post my content across different social networks.
By that point I was sure I had lost my Greek profile, so there was no reason to wait around hoping something would change.
So Now What?
All social networks are rented land, not just Threads.
They’re spaces where I share thoughts and create content so my voice can reach as far as possible.
But because I always keep in mind that they’re rented land, I cross-post to as many social networks as I can. Basically, I take the same thought and copy it across multiple profiles, so if something like what happened on Threads occurs, I can still keep spreading my ideas on the other platforms.
Of course, it’s always possible that all my accounts get deleted. It’s possible I could lose access and have no control over anything I’ve built.
That’s why I always make sure that whatever I publish, whatever idea I share publicly, ends up — one way or another — as permanent text on my personal blog.
My personal blog is the only place where I have absolute control. The only place where I can write whatever I want without the risk of waking up one morning and finding it gone.
As long as I keep paying for it, of course.
Because running a blog isn’t free if you want to have a real shot on the internet these days.
So after they shut down my Threads account, I didn’t go looking for alternative ways to spread my thoughts — because I’ve already built a system where my ideas get distributed across different parts of the internet.
Did it hurt losing all that work on Threads? Of course it did.
I won’t hide that I felt disappointed in Meta once again. And I won’t deny that I started wondering how much it all really means — this whole content creation and social media marketing thing.
I wondered if maybe I should focus exclusively on my personal blog or on YouTube videos — even though YouTube is also rented land, because I never know if I’ll wake up one night and get an email from Google saying my YouTube channel is being deleted.
But video is a different story, because I can’t host it on my blog due to size and storage limits. So I’m kind of forced to “need” YouTube, since there’s no other platform where I can upload videos.
If YouTube ever decides to pull a move like Facebook and Threads did, then I’ll have no choice but to start a brand-new channel from scratch.
Just the thought of that scares me! But every obstacle is an opportunity, as they say.
So what did I do, now that I could no longer cross-post to my Greek Threads account? 🤔
I kept writing on X, which has been my favorite social network for 17 years. So naturally, I shared the bad news with the people who follow me there, as a warning that what happened to me could easily happen to them too.
Those posts attracted a few spam bots — accounts trying to trick people and steal their social media access by telling me that if I contacted this or that person, they were supposedly experts who could get my Threads account back.
Of course, I didn’t reply to any of them. But it was a good reminder of how many scams exist on the internet and how easily someone who’s lost access to a social profile can end up losing a lot more.
The Threads U-Turn
That morning, my usual workflow for posting on social media changed very little. The only thing I adjusted was removing the Threads account from the cross-posting tool, so it wouldn’t keep trying to post to my Threads profile.
You could say I went back to business as usual.
But there was still a bitter feeling inside me — until around 9 a.m., when I suddenly got another email from Threads, again without me doing anything extra. While the last message I had received said my account would be deleted, now Threads was suddenly telling me that they had made a mistake and I had access to my account again. 😮
Of course, I immediately logged into Threads, and sure enough, nothing had been deleted. All my previous posts were still there.
I figured it was probably some kind of glitch. That something had gone wrong on Threads’ servers and a mistake had been made. 🐛
Still, that doesn’t change the fact that this mistake — even if it was a mistake — could have locked me out of my profile and all the work I had done up until then. So right or wrong, the risk was there, is there, and will always be there as long as I don’t control my profiles on these social networks.
The good thing is that I don’t rely on just one of them.
So this whole experience made me realize how well I’ve actually set things up.
In the end, all that overthinking and analysis I do before deciding to do something sometimes does make sense.
And I see it clearly when things go wrong — when “shit hits the fan,” as they say.
The downside, though, is that this whole story reminded me that I’ve been neglecting my personal blog.
Even though I had originally said that every idea and thought I share on social media should be the starting point for writing a much longer article about it, I had let that mindset slide.
And this Threads experience pushed me to shift my focus back toward my personal blog — the only place where I have full control.
My Top Priority
So my priority needs to become my personal blog again.
Social networks are great. Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube, and Threads are great — places where I can share whatever thought I have and have my voice reach the other side of the world almost instantly.
But I never know if I’ll still be able to do that tomorrow.
That’s why I need to turn my attention toward my own blog and create much more content there.
And give it much more real value — because no matter how much value I create on social networks, it can easily get lost in the endless stream of messages that exist there.
On my personal blog, though, someone who lands on it — even by chance — and something catches their attention, might even subscribe to my newsletter, and a different kind of relationship begins.
A different relationship with an audience that no one can take away from me, and no one can cut off the connection and trust that gets built.
Except me, of course.
Will This Lesson Actually Stick?
So how do I go back to doing everything after this lesson from Threads?