For the past nine years, Australian artist Thea-Mai Baumann has run an Instagram account that recently became some of the most sought-after real-estate on the internet: @Metaverse. In November, days after Facebook announced that it was rebranding as Meta and creating Mark Zuckerberg’s virtual dream world—known as the metaverse—Baumann’s account disappeared without warning. The artist told The New York Times that, when she tried to log into her account on Nov. 2, an alert told her: “Your account has been blocked for pretending to be someone else.” She told the newspaper: “This account is a decade of my life and work. I didn’t want my contribution to the metaverse to be wiped from the internet... That happens to women in tech, to women of color in tech, all the time.” On Dec. 2, the Times contacted Meta to ask why Baumann’s account was blocked, and, only then, the company restored it. An Instagram spokesman said the account had been “incorrectly removed for impersonation” and would be put back online. “We’re sorry this error occurred,” he wrote.
