Andres Iniesta was just a normal designer and family man from Madrid, using his Instagram @ainiesta to share his daily stories with his family and friends – you know, like the rest of us do.
But he had one downfall, he was born with the same name as Spanish soccer star, Andres Iniesta of FC Barcelona.
Most of us wouldn’t mind being named after someone famous, but for Andres it meant the downfall of his privacy and rights.
According to Andre’s recent post on Medium, his Instagram account was inaccessible to him apparently due to allegedly infringing Instagram’s terms of use.
But what could a regular guy from Madrid whose images were not exactly controversial have done to be put in that position?
Andres was just as confused as the rest of us would be, especially when his Instagram followers told him that Andres Iniesta (the soccer star) started appearing on their following lists.
So basically, regular Andres had his account closed without any warning, so that superstar Andres could have the account name.
Good job Instagram (insert sarcasm.)
“I consider that my rights (we still have some on the internet) have been violated somehow. I haven’t done anything wrong and have lost not only my pictures, but being able to share important moments with my friends and family. What pains me is that all of this has happened without any explanation, not even a twitter response from Instagram. I’m not a celebrity, and I don’t want to be one. I just don’t like things being taken away from me,” shared Andres.
Iniesta made plenty of attempts to contact Instagram via Twitter and Facebook but they never got back to him…until this story went viral.
Instagram finally restored the account to Andres while Andres, the soccer player, is now using @andresiniesta8.
Instagram has since apologized for the “mistake” made; let’s hope they learned their lesson.