If you’ve been wondering where our Instagram page has gone, you’re not alone. So are we. In May, with no specific warning and no clear violation, our account was permanently disabled.
Gone. Years of community building, product showcases, showing the equipment we used and customer interactions wiped out by someone not taking the time to look at our posts or check the IP addresses of the reporters to see they would be coming from a select team of competitors.
And if this story sounds familiar, it’s because it is. This isn’t our first rodeo with a tech giant acting as judge, jury, and digital executioner. We’ve been here before with Shopify too.
The “Reasoning”? Simple. There are £ millions to be made in this UK scene.
The official notification was as vague as it was final: we had violated “Community Guidelines”. Which guideline? They won’t say. What content was in violation? They won’t show us. Is there an appeal process with an actual human? You can probably guess the answer to that.
This is the frustrating reality for small businesses online in 2025. We are at the mercy of automated systems that can be easily manipulated by competitors. Our story isn’t new. We have never once tried the horrible tactics like this, even when our competitors have been ripping off our product ideas and IP from the site. And we have a strong suspicion of exactly who is behind it too.
Exploiting the ‘Report’ Button
We’ve seen this all before. When you’re doing something right, and doing it well, you don’t just attract loyal customers; you also attract the jealous eyes of competitors wanting to take top UK spot by any means necessary – we organically achieved and maintained ours for more years than these new businesses have even existed.
It’s become shockingly easy for a malicious competitor, or even a team of a couple of shops, to mass-report a profile or its content. They can flag our posts for “selling drugs” – a complete falsehood, as our microscopy spores are perfectly legal to sell and possess in the UK. But does the algorithm know the nuances of mycology law in the United Kingdom? Of course not.
Should We Do The Same Back?
It’s all too easy to buy 10 cheap £10 phones, set up instagram accounts and spam a bunch of “Drug Selling” reports to the shops we think did this for an easy, swift take down of their profiles. But we couldn’t stoop to their level. It would change us as people if we did. And if their profiles did get knocked offline, I can guarantee they’ll pass the blame to us. No, we’ll take it. We know they are just trying to protect their position they have won from us being away from the scene from 2023 till 2025.
What We’ve Lost (And What We Haven’t)
We’re not going to pretend this doesn’t hurt. We lost a direct line to thousands of you, so many amazing folk we’ve known since the very beginnings when we had the balls to open the very first spore vender shop in the UK. We lost years of content that showed our passion and our journey from our 1-bedroom flat to the industrial unit and labs we built. There were so many random things we would post – it was fun. We lost thousands of followers on there.
But here’s what they can’t take away:
- Our Expertise: We’ve been at the heart of the UK mycology scene since 2017. We innovate, we test, and we provide the best products on the market. An Instagram ban doesn’t change that.
- Our Quality: Our lab-grade spores and foolproof grow kits speak for themselves. The quality of our work is why we have so many repeat customers.
- Our Community: This is the most important one. Our community isn’t just a follower count on a shitty Silicon Valley app owned by a prick that shadow bans anyone mentioning starving kids in Gaza. It’s you. The people who read our blog, who buy our products, and who share our passion for the world of fungi and microscopy.
Where Do We Go From Here?
This is why we’ve always said it’s dangerous to trust American big-tech.
If you haven’t already, please do two things:
- Bookmark our website. Make Cylocybe.co.uk your primary source for our products and information.
- Add our new instagram profile: cylocybeuk (but we know they’ll try their best to take it down again).
Thank you for your continued support. It means more now than ever.