Free the Memes

About

Free the Memes or Free the Meme Pages refers to a social media campaign in support of Instagram meme accounts which have been removed during the July 2019 Instagram Meme Account Purge. The campaign gained traction on Instagram and Twitter in early August 2019, with a raid on the comment section of the official Instagram page taking place on August 10th, 2019.

Origin

Between July 25th and 26th, 2019, Instagram deleted over 50 popular Instagram accounts, including both notable reposting pages and original content creators.^[1] On July 27th, Instagram account worlds_largest_raid was launched, inviting its followers to spam "free the meme pages" on Instagram's official account.^[2] The post announcing the raid received over 240,000 likes in three weeks (shown below, left). Also on July 27th, Instagram account free_the_meme_pages was launched, promoting #freethememepages hashtag and inviting to sign a petition requesting Instagram to restore the accounts.^[3][4] The account gained over 43,800 followers in three weeks.

Spread

In the following days, multiple posts, stories and comments containing the hashtags #freethememepages and #freethememes were posted on Instagram, with the hashtags also spreading to Twitter, Snapchat and other social media platforms in the following days (examples shown below).^[5] Additionally, on August 10th, 2019, multiple comments containing the hashtags appeared in posts made by Instagram's official account.^[6]

On Twitter, owners of notable meme accounts shared the hashtag, including posts by ill.mp4, ^[7] yupantony^[8] and zuccccccccccc.^[9]

On August 10th, 2019, The Daily Dot reported on the campaign.^[10] On August 11th, 2019, worlds_largest_raid announced that another raid on Instagram's official account will be taking place on August 15th, 2019.^[11]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References