The Instagram accounts of two well-known Finnish museums were unexpectedly closed without proper explanation: “This is a horrible situation”

The two of you The Instagram accounts of the well-known Finnish museum were closed on Monday, February 24. The Didrichsen Museum and the Finnish Museum of Photography both received a message from a meta company that owns Instagram.

“We were just informed that the account was temporarily closed and that there is 180 days to complain or the account will be closed permanently,” says Didrichsen Art Museum Director Maria Didrichsen.

Both museums were asked to strengthen identity. Both worked according to the instructions, but for either, it didn’t help. According to Meta, the accounts are now closed permanently.

As a criterion for closing Didrichsen was told that “your account may be in contact with another account that has acted in violation of our rules”.

On Thursday, a suspicious -looking email was sent to Didrichsen, which provided help to return the hacking business account.

“It seems that someone has deliberately caused the removal of our account and is now trying to get money from us to restore it,” Maria Didrichsen estimates.

Social Media platforms are often accurate content that could be interpreted as political, nudity or otherwise “inappropriate”.

According to Maria Didrichsen, their museum account has never published anything on forbidden criteria. He says that all of their Instagram publications are also on Facebook and are still there. On the Museum’s Facebook page, the latest publications before closing were dealt with by a visual artist Reidar Särestöniemi.

Communications Manager of the Museum of Photography Jaakko Laasanen says the museum has taken a stand on behalf of Ukraine and Palestine, and that several exhibitions in the museum have a political side. “This year, however, we haven’t had anything particularly provocative,” he says. All Instagram publications at the Museum of Photography are still on Facebook.

Photography The temporary closure of the museum account was justified by violation of the terms and conditions of the account.

“It was done as asked, but it didn’t help. The next day, the message came that the account was permanently removed. The decision cannot be appealed, ”says Laasanen of the Museum of Photography.

“This is a horrible situation. As far as I know, our account has been the third largest museum account in Finland. We had almost 45,000 followers. We have just been ahead of us only much larger than us Kiasma and Ateneum. ”

According to Laasanen, Instagram has been a “extremely important message channel” for the museum.

For the Didrichsen Art Museum, Instagram has also been an important channel.