Instagram keeps blocking you? Same here, and I'd like to tell you how it went, because the ending is useful.

This summer the accounts of three of our magazines, Quadro, Marika and Figgi, were banned for good. Not restricted, not shadow-anything. Gone. Seven years of posting, the readers who found us there, the DMs with photographers from forty countries, the whole archive of covers. A model somewhere decided something was off with us, and the appeal went to a robot who, as far as I can tell, is still thinking.

We tried the obvious. New accounts. They lasted a few weeks each, then the same door closed, because the new account was "linked" to the old one by a phone, a device, a face, I never found out which. We tried writing to a human. There isn't one.

What it actually cost

I'll be specific, because "we lost our Instagram" sounds small until you count.

The magazines kept printing. Nothing changed on paper. But the way people found us collapsed overnight. A photographer in Lisbon who was going to send a series in September never saw the open call. A makeup artist in Milan who'd been tagged in four of our posts lost the only public place those credits lived. Brands who'd DMed us about creators had to find a new door, and most didn't bother.

And the creators we'd published lost something too. Their work had been shown to an audience that existed on a platform we didn't own, and when the platform switched us off, it switched off their visibility with us. They'd done nothing wrong. Neither had we. It didn't matter.

The lesson I didn't want

I'd known for years that building on rented land is risky. Everybody knows. You post anyway, because that's where the people are, and you tell yourself you'll build the owned thing later.

Later arrived in July, uninvited.

Here's what I understood, sitting with the empty accounts: the problem wasn't Instagram. The problem was that neither we nor our creators had a record that lived anywhere else. Every credit, every cover, every "featured in" existed as a post, and a post is a tenant. When the landlord changes the locks, the tenant is on the street.

What I'm building instead

So I stopped betting on Instagram and built the thing I should have built in 2019: a place where a creator's record belongs to the creator.

On Artells Media every photographer, model, makeup artist, stylist, designer, illustrator and digital artist has a profile with their specialty and city. Every published series gives everyone in the credits a verified link that opens without a password. The weekly Open Feed has a theme every Monday and the editors mark what caught their eye, and the mark stays on your page. The monthly Awards have no entry fee and a blind jury, and the top three go on a print cover. Your Creator Score grows only from those things, not from likes.

None of it can be switched off by an algorithm, because there is no algorithm deciding who sees you. The pages are written so that people, search engines and AI assistants can all read them, which matters more every month: when a client asks an AI "find me a stylist in Paris with editorial work", the answer comes from pages like these.

Inside pages cost nothing. Covers and PRO are paid, and I say so up front, because I've had enough of platforms that hide the price until you're hooked.

If you've lost an account too

You know the feeling: years of work, gone, and a form that leads nowhere. Here's what I'd do today, in this order.

Build the page you own. Specialty, city, one line about what you do, six to twelve frames that belong together.

Get one credit on it that a stranger can check. A series in a magazine, an editors' mark, an Awards placement. One is enough to start.

Then post on Instagram all you like. It's a fine place to be seen. Just never again the only place your record lives.

Registration is an email link, no password: artellsmedia.com

Marina Abramova, publisher and editor at Artells Media