Winning a gold medal at the Olympics is pretty glorious (we imagine), but it’s not quite as special as sharing an Instagram post about the win.
So take a moment to feel for Jamaican sprinter Elaine Thompson-Herah, who was unceremoniously dumped from her Instagram account this week after she won two gold medals.
Shortly after she won her second gold in the 200m, Thompson-Herah shared a video of her family celebrating, as well as some official footage of the race.
As the International Olympic Committee (IOC) owns the exclusive rights to all official race footage, Thompson-Herah’s video was flagged as a copyright breach.
“Rights Holding Broadcasters (RHBs) have the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympic Games,” the IOC told Reuters.
“This includes distribution on social media, where athletes are invited to share the content provided by the RHBs on their accounts but cannot post competition content natively.
“Should that occur, the removal of such content from social media platforms happens automatically.”
As well as removing the video, Instagram also blocked Thompson-Herah from accessing the platform for two days.
https://twitter.com/FastElaine/status/1422625283534901253
And while Facebook (which owns Instagram) has confirmed the video was removed due to the copyright breach, the social media network has backtracked on the decision to block the sprinter.
“My block is cleared,” Thompson-Herah posted on an Instagram shortly after she Tweeted about being banned.
Facebook has confirmed the blocking was a mistake.
Image: iStock/stockcam
