Social media professionals: how do you escalate a serious Instagram safeguarding issue when Meta’s reporting system fails?

I’m hoping some of the social media professionals in here can help because we have genuinely run out of ideas.

An Instagram account connected to my football academy has been contacting people associated with us, including children as young as 12 and 13, as well as parents and other people who follow the academy.

There have been concerns involving harassment, suspected phishing/scam activity and attempts to obtain information or money.

Because children are involved, we have treated this as a serious safeguarding matter.

The police have been contacted and there is an active crime reference.

We have repeatedly reported the account through Instagram and I have also contacted Meta support directly. I’ve attached screenshots of the conversation.

Meta were sympathetic and understood what I was explaining, but ultimately I was told that the support channel couldn't initiate a manual human review, couldn't accept our evidence and couldn't manually escalate the account. We were directed back to Instagram’s normal reporting system.

That is where we are completely stuck.

Whoever is operating the account appears to be going through people who follow or are connected to the football academy and contacting them individually.

It has reached the point where we have advised parents to consider temporarily deactivating their children’s social media accounts and not engaging with messages because we simply don't know who is going to be contacted next.

We have genuinely run out of ideas.

Police informed. Meta informed. Reports submitted. Evidence preserved. Safeguarding concerns raised. Yet we cannot seem to get the overall pattern reviewed by an actual person.

For those of you who manage social media professionally, particularly anyone who has dealt with Meta/Instagram at an organisational level:

How do you actually escalate something like this?

Is there a safeguarding, trust & safety, law-enforcement liaison or business-support route that allows an organisation to submit the evidence and police crime reference and have the situation reviewed as a whole?

I’ve left the account visible in the screenshot so people understand which account is involved.

If you believe what you see breaches Instagram’s rules, please use Instagram’s own reporting tools as you consider appropriate.

But what I really need is advice from anyone who knows how to get something this serious beyond the automated reporting loop and in front of an actual person at Meta.

Any help or professional experience would be massively appreciated.

Comments

jawanda•about 3 hours ago•2

Well you as the football academy have basically no recourse. Each individual child who is contacted needs to report the user / message directly so that meta can look into the specific messages. You as a third party have basically no sway at all with meta and they will not investigate something that doesn't directly involve your account (it doesn't matter if they're using your account to find the kids).

On your end, you can remove all tags in photos so that the bad guy can't as easily find the kids through your account.

Best of luck.

CareerOk7697•about 4 hours ago•OP•1

https://preview.redd.it/6adcybkwbhnh1.jpeg?width=1320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fc221fb7ef6f42ced901e28554b7f925ef4ff6a3

https://www.instagram.com/sk_uwn?igsi=MW80d3Q3ZHFsc29kYg==

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CareerOk7697•about 4 hours ago•OP•1

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CareerOk7697•about 4 hours ago•OP•1

https://preview.redd.it/yup22bv3chnh1.jpeg?width=1320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e96b686c45de4365bae073814472638dd6fb66cb

J-Clash•about 3 hours ago•1

In my personal (not professional) experience of dealing with criminal harassment online, you have to let the police processes take their course.

Outside of blocking and reporting, there's nothing else you can really do on the platform itself. If the person isn't breaking the terms of service, or the law, Meta won't do anything on top of that. The police can ask them to take some action, which they then may do.

Are your chat pictures with an actual support person, or just the Meta AI? Because the latter definitely won't help you much. There are a few other contact/escalation forms (like this one) but if you've spammed them already then I'm not sure what other options you have.

From Meta's position: Children should either not be on Instagram (youngest age is 13 I think) or they should have a teen account which has certain restrictions. If these kids are using general accounts, Meta will absolve themselves of any responsibility. It's another reason why bans are being discussed worldwide.

CareerOk7697•about 4 hours ago•OP•1

https://preview.redd.it/jy37y8h0chnh1.jpeg?width=1320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e1faa9e02a3f8ce57c351971c61e694cddd172d2

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