Instagram disabled artist’s @metaverse handle after Facebook rebranded to Meta

Thea-Mai Baumann had used the account for more than a decade but it suddenly vanished, taking all her work with it

An Instagram user with the handle @metaverse last month found herself blocked from her account, which featured a decade of her life and work - after parent company Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta.

On 28 October, Facebook, which owns Instagram, kept the social media platform Facebook so named but changed its umbrella corporate name to Meta - signaling an effort to reflect the virtual world that the tech giant considers the future of the internet.