Appeal it, and do it now rather than later. If you’ve been hit with an Instagram copyright strike you believe is wrong, every strike on your account is listed in Account Status, inside your settings, and each one has an appeal option attached to it. Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s Head, was asked about bogus strikes during an August 2026 Q&A and was direct about it.
“if it was a mistake, you should appeal it” – Adam Mosseri, August 2026
Where strikes are listed
Go to your profile, open Settings, then Account Status. Every piece of content that’s been removed shows up there, whether it came off for copyright or for anything else, along with what happened and what it means for your account.
That page is the whole picture. If you’ve been guessing whether an old removal is still counting against you, this is where the guessing stops. Instagram’s appeal help page covers what a review involves once you submit one.
What happens when you appeal
The appeal goes for another look. If Instagram agrees the removal was a mistake, the strike is removed from your account rather than merely expiring, and Mosseri’s point was that this matters beyond the single post.
Strikes accumulate, and accumulated strikes bring restrictions: reduced distribution, lost access to features, and in the worst case an account you can’t post from. A strike you left alone because the post didn’t matter can still be sitting there when a strike that does matter arrives.
Why bogus strikes happen
Copyright complaints on Instagram are handled at volume, and the system that handles volume makes errors in both directions. Music that was cleared for your account type, footage you shot yourself that matches something else, a claim filed by someone with no actual rights to the material: all of it reaches the same queue.
Instagram’s intellectual property help page explains what a rights holder has to assert to file a claim, which is worth reading before you write your appeal, because an appeal that answers the specific claim does better than one that says the strike is unfair.
Doing this properly
Appeal every removal you believe is wrong, not just the ones on posts you cared about. Keep it factual: what the content was, why you had the right to use it, and any license or source you can point to. Write it once, in plain sentences, and don’t argue with the policy.
Then check Account Status on a schedule rather than only after something breaks. Once a month takes two minutes.
For agency and brand accounts, add one more step: tell whoever else posts to the account. A strike on a shared account is a shared problem, and the person who uploaded the clip is usually the only one who knows where it came from.
If several people publish to the same accounts, the practical fix is that music and footage sources get recorded at the point the post is planned rather than reconstructed weeks later from memory. That’s a note field on the post, and keeping it next to the post itself is what makes an appeal a five-minute job instead of an investigation.
If you’re already planning posts somewhere shared, the only change here is one line for where the audio came from.
FAQ
Where do you see copyright strikes on Instagram? In Account Status, under Settings on your profile. It lists removed content and what each removal means for your account.
Can a copyright strike be removed from your Instagram account? Yes. If you appeal and Instagram agrees the removal was a mistake, the strike comes off rather than sitting out its term.
Should you appeal a strike on a post you don’t care about? Yes. Strikes stack, and the restrictions that follow apply to the whole account, not to the individual post.
What happens if you ignore Instagram strikes? They stay on your record and can bring reduced reach, feature restrictions, or account suspension as they build up.
