Aussie artist Thea-Mai Bauman involved in Metaverse drama
An Australian artist only realised she was involved in a stoush with the tech giant when she attempted to log on to her Instagram account.
An Australian artist has unintentionally found herself involved in an uncomfortable situation when Facebook rebranded as Meta in October.
Thea-Mai Bauman is an artist and technologist who created an Instagram account in 2012 called @metaverse. This account documented her life in Brisbane, her travels to Shanghai and the building of her augmented reality company called Metaverse Makeovers.
The account never caught fire and by October 28, the day Facebook announced its name change, it had less than 1000 followers.
She got wind of the name change before most, with strangers messaging her Instagram account asking to buy the handle.
The Brisbane woman told The New York Times the account was disabled just days after Facebook announced the change of name.
“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,” she said.
“That happens to women in tech, to women of colour in tech, all the time.”
She started Metaverse Makeovers in 2012. The product worked when a phone ran the app above real-world nail design created by her team it would show holograms popping from the nails.
The company considered scaling the technology to other pieces of clothing and various items but the money ran out in 2017.
Despite this, the Metaverse account remained live until November 2, 2021.
When Ms Bauman attempted to log on in November she was met with the message: “Your account has been blocked for pretending to be someone else”.
On December 2, a month after the artist first appealed to Instagram to restore her account, The New York Times contacted Meta to ask why it had been shut down.
The publication reported, an Instagram spokesman said that the account had been “incorrectly removed for impersonation” and would be restored.
Two days later, the account was back online.
The spokesman did not explain why it had been flagged for impersonation, or who it might have been impersonating.
The company did not respond to further questions about whether the blocking had been linked to Facebook’s rebranding.
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