My Threads Account Was Permanently Banned (And Nobody Could Tell me Why)

New writers interested in publishing hear a lot of the same advice from several sources. One piece of advice comes up again and again:

Set up an email newsletter.

Why? Because every platform, from social media to online book retailers (I’m looking at you, Zon), runs on algorithms. Those algorithms can change your discoverability in a heartbeat—or a single line of code.

Your email list is one of the few things you truly own.

Well, if I haven’t learned, relearned, and gotten kicked in the teeth by that lesson.

TL;DR: My Threads Account Got Permanently Banned

Over a month ago, my Threads account disappeared.

After several weeks of bug reports, support chats, a verification selfie, and even a phone call with Meta support, I finally learned that my account had been permanently disabled.

The catch?

Nobody could tell me why.

The Great Threads Mystery

At first, I didn’t even know the account had been banned.

I learned something was wrong when my scheduling tool, Metricool, couldn’t publish a scheduled post. When I went to the Threads app to manually publish the post, I couldn’t log in. Threads kept asking me for a two-factor authentication code, but wouldn’t send me one. From where I sat, everything looked like a technical glitch.

So I proceeded to read help articles, submit bug reports, chat with AI-support bots, and bang my head against my keyboard. I spent far more time thinking about Threads than any human should. Every bug report promised a follow-up email within 48 hours, but no follow-up emails ever arrived.

Eventually, I discovered the holy grail: the Meta Business Suite support portal. Since I’ve spent actual money trying to advertise books on Facebook and Instagram over the years (with results that can generously be described as “mixed”), I had access to real human support agents.

One support representative even called me on the phone! At that point, I thought I was finally getting somewhere. Instead, I learned that my Threads account had been permanently disabled.

Why Was It Banned?

That’s the million-dollar question.

I asked. Repeatedly. And no one could tell me.

I submitted an appeal. I uploaded a fresh selfie. I spoke with multiple support representatives. Nobody had access to that information. At one point, a support representative told me directly that they didn’t have the tools to see why the account had been banned, and that there was no way to escalate my issue.

The final decision had already been made. The account was gone.

The best part of this whole ordeal came when I received an email informing me that my account had been permanently disabled and inviting me to click a button to review additional details.

… and the link was broken.

Which honestly feels like the perfect summary of the entire experience.

Moving On

I eventually told the last support representative that I would not be creating a replacement account. My brand name is Beth Martin Books. I use the same handle (bethmartinbooks) across all my social media accounts. If I can’t use it on Threads, then I won’t be using Threads.

Fortunately, Threads was never a major part of my marketing strategy.

The experience was frustrating, but it reinforced something I’ve believed for a long time:

Social media is borrowed space.

You don’t own the platform.
The algorithms make mistakes.
And sometimes no one can even tell you what broke.

So What’s the Lesson Here?

I love the first few lines of the Serenity Prayer—not even as a religious thing, but as practical life advice.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I can’t change this situation.

As frustrating as it is, my best course of action is to move on and focus on what’s within my control.

I still have readers who want my next newsletter.
I still have this website.
I still have the mountain of books I’ve written.

I’m going to be okay.

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Want to help an author out?

Consider picking up one of my books! May I recommend Starship Blunder 2: Starship Wonder, a humorous space adventure packed with lighthearted sci-fi misadventures.

Get Starship Blunder 2 ebook | Go to the Beth Martin Books web store | Buy one of my books on Amazon

Starship Blunder Is Free This Week!

Looking for a funny sci-fi read full of chaos, questionable heroics, and a crew that probably should not be trusted with a spaceship?

Good news! From today until May 15, 2026, the ebook edition of Starship Blunder is available for free through my webstore.

Normally $5.99, you can download it for $0 this week only.

Download Starship Blunder for Free

About the Book

On the Starship Blunder, heroism is optional, but chaos is guaranteed.

With a ship held together by duct tape and vibes, the misfit crew sometimes saves the day—though crash landings, accidental explosions, and the occasional extinction-level event may be involved. The Conglomeracy assigns them the simplest missions in the galaxy, which somehow always end in catastrophe.

This comedic space opera anthology features interconnected short stories from multiple authors, all set aboard the galaxy’s most disaster-prone starship.

Why Start Here?

Starship Blunder is the first book in the series, making it the perfect place to meet the crew, explore the universe, and discover just how badly a simple mission can go.

And if you enjoy the ride, Book 2, Starship Blunder 2: Starship Wonder, is also available now!

Grab your free copy of Starship Blunder

Happy reading, and may your spaceship be better maintained than the Blunder.

Is an AI Book Positioning Report Worth It? (My Honest Review)

Indie publishing is hard. Of course, writing a book in itself is quite a feat, but beyond that, there are so many challenging aspects of self-publishing that can make the struggles of writing pale in comparison.

For those who want to turn their passion for writing into a successful career that makes decent money, learning how to market your book is one of the greatest challenges.

There are many steps to marketing a book, the first being positioning. Once you’ve written a great book—before even finalizing the title, cover, and description—you have to answer, “Who is this book for?” Which audiences will both read and love your story? This positioning goes deeper than just genre. It includes considerations like keywords, categories, comparable titles, and even the cover.

Many authors get their book positioning wrong

Let me start with an example. Do you remember the movie Passengers? The trailer presented the movie as a science fiction action flick. What moviegoers got was a romance with a spaceship backdrop. People who expected an action movie were sorely disappointed and panned the movie in reviews.

Several indie authors have made similar positioning mistakes with similar outcomes. They write an excellent book, market it as the wrong genre, and end up disappointing readers, leading to poor sales or bad reviews.

Even I’ve positioned novels incorrectly in the past. When I launched Quality DNA, I was convinced my story was pure science fiction since it included technological elements. However, that category didn’t feel like a good fit for sales, since sci-fi often brings expectations of space exploration or far-future settings.

I received reviews saying the book was very fast-paced—maybe even too much so. I started telling people it read like a thriller until I realized the book was a thriller.

Pivoting my targeting and categories has helped with sales across my novels, so I’m a true believer in the importance of book positioning.

I first heard about Bublish’s new tool, the AI Book Positioning Report, when it launched. I kept an eye on it, and when Bublish emailed me a limited-time discount, I knew I had nothing to lose!

What you get in the Bublish AI Book Positioning Report

Although book positioning typically comes before publishing, I decided to try the tool on Starship Blunder to test it out.

The intake form took no time at all to fill out. You enter a working title, select up to three goals for your project (things like strengthening your author brand, sharing a message, making money, etc.), answer a couple of simple questions, briefly describe the story, and upload your manuscript.

Within about ten minutes, the report is ready to download. Mine included:

• 9 title suggestions
• 4 series title suggestions
• 10 Amazon category suggestions
• 5 BISAC category suggestions
• 15 keyword suggestions
• A reader persona description
• 5 suggested community/book club types
• 8 comparable titles
• An enhanced description (~2000 characters)
• 5 top selling points

Chat, I was impressed.

I was genuinely impressed with the report I received. The tool clearly got Starship Blunder.

The list of comps was the standout for me. It included a mix of classic titles and newer books with overlapping themes and elements. Some (like Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) were ones I was already using to target ads.

Additionally, the selling points focused on the book’s emotional experience, which is what draws readers in. The report identified “found family” as a core element of the book, something I hadn’t explicitly called out before, but which absolutely fits the Blunder crew.

I’m excited to test the keyword suggestions. Keywords can be incredibly difficult to get right. It’s hard to know what readers are actually searching for, what’s too broad, and what will resonate. It’s easy to fall back on generic terms that return millions of results. There are expensive tools dedicated solely to keyword research, so if the keywords from this report help Starship Blunder sell more copies, that alone will be worth the price.

Naturally, I didn’t need the title suggestions for the book or series, since it’s already published and has a strong title. Similarly, I won’t be using the enhanced description.

That said, the description did a great job summarizing the book and matching its humorous tone. It ran a bit long and didn’t quite hit the sharp sales beats I’d want in a final blurb, so I’d recommend editing the report’s description down if you want to use it.

The least useful part of the report for me was the reader persona. It basically stated that the ideal reader for Starship Blunder enjoys reading books with the themes present in Blunder, which is true but a bit obvious.

A more actionable persona might include details like age range, interests, and behaviors. For example, I’d describe Starship Blunder’s ideal reader as someone 30+ who enjoys lighthearted media and parody. They’re likely fans of Star Trek, Spaceballs, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Onion, or Weird Al, and may spend time in fandom communities, attend conventions, or browse sites like TV Tropes.

So, who is this for?

A tool like this would have been a game-changer when I was a new author.

I struggled to get my books to break out until I started writing the Puzzling Escapes series, which is so niche and targeted to a specific audience that marketing was simple.

I highly recommend the AI Book Positioning Report for:

• first-time authors preparing to publish
• indie authors unsure about categories or keywords
• authors switching genres or writing under a new pen name

It’s incredibly difficult to position a book without reading the full manuscript, which means it’s easy to waste time and money—even when using tools that others swear by. Many marketing tools rely on your book description, which might not fully represent the story, leading to mismatched targeting.

The current price for the tool is $199 per title, which I think is still a bit steep for what’s included. That said, I was able to get my report for a fraction of that, so if you’re reading this in April 2026, definitely check out the current promotion.

I’ll be keeping an eye on how the tool evolves. I’d love to see improvements to the reader persona, a shorter and more sales-focused description, and possibly ad-targeting insights or copy suggestions.

Closing Thoughts

I originally figured that even if the report wasn’t helpful, I’d still get my money’s worth at the promotional price by writing a review like this. Instead, I got far more value than I expected and was genuinely impressed with the quality of the AI Book Positioning Report. I’ll likely use it again when I have a new novel approaching publication.

Even if you’re not currently preparing a book, it’s worth checking out Bublish and what they offer.

Bublish website

Keep AI Away From My Book

We live in exciting times where sophisticated technology is capable of arranging text and pixels in ways that make sense to human viewers. People hold all sorts of feelings and opinions about these generative AI tools. For this post, I want to focus on a fairly narrow topic within the current AI discussions: protecting your books from being used to train AI.

Authors and publishers get to choose how the text in their books may be used. In fact, it’s common practice to state how a book may be used on the copyright page using disclosures like:

“No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.”

Authors control what formats their books may appear in, whether the book can be translated into other languages, and whether Stephen Spielberg has permission to film a movie adaptation of their work. They also have the right to deny or allow the use of their book for training AI.

The Anthropic Settlement

So yes, a lot of books have already been used to train AI systems. I can’t argue against that. There was a major class-action lawsuit against Anthropic for training their AI system, Claude, on books without obtaining the authors’ permission.

I wish the lawsuit had been settled simply because training on books without permission is wrong. But the case took a different turn: the issue wasn’t just AI training. The company had allegedly obtained many of those books through piracy.

AI companies stole books to train AI.

Learn more about the Anthropic Settlement

Honestly, I wasn’t horribly surprised to learn this. Large AI companies have often treated publicly available content on the internet as “fair game” (it isn’t) when building training datasets.

But my focus here isn’t on what has already happened. I’m not here to convince you not to use AI tools trained on questionable data. I simply needed a starting point for this discussion, which is this:

Bad actors are going to act badly.

The most practical response is to protect yourself and your work. Make it clear that your books are meant for human readers, and put barriers in place so that if another Anthropic-style incident happens, you have legal standing to seek compensation.

Whether or not you think it would be cool for an AI chatbot to mimic your writing style, companies should obtain your permission before using your text to train AI tools.

Opt-out Where You Can

As a first line of defense, always read the terms of service for online tools before inputting text. Some platforms may use posts or user-generated content to train AI systems. Some platforms also offer ways to opt out of having your data used for AI training.

And remember: any publicly available content is easier for bad actors to scrape and reuse.

Say “NO” to AI Training on Your Copyright Page

An easy way to make others aware that your book should not be used as training data is to include a “No AI Training” disclosure on the copyright page.

The Author’s Guild has put together an excellent disclosure which they encourage all authors and publishers to use:

“NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.”

Learn more on the Author’s Guild website

Of course, you can tailor this disclosure, but it serves as a strong first barrier.

Register Your Book’s Copyright Claim

Your work is automatically copyrighted the moment you create it. However, registering your work with the appropriate copyright authority, depending on where you live, is vital if you ever need to enforce your rights.

Remember the settlement mentioned earlier? Courts determined that Anthropic may need to compensate authors and publishers whose books were used.

In the United States, books must generally be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office before a lawsuit is filed in order to seek statutory damages. So to the indie authors who claim filing copyright isn’t that important? It actually becomes extremely important if you ever need to protect your book.

Registering copyright for a book in the U.S. is super simple and can be done online through the U.S. Copyright Office’s website. Registration currently costs about $45 (as of 2026), can be done right after you publish, and typically doesn’t require a mailed copy of the book.

Closing Thoughts

The internet is a wonderful place where people can freely share thoughts, ideas, and their creations. Unfortunately, it’s also very easy for bad actors to grab publicly available content and use it in ways the creator never intended.

I’m glad we have legal protections against theft and copyright infringement, and I’m hopeful that clearer laws and policies will emerge that allow companies to train AI models using only data where permission was explicitly granted.

There’s always a balance between protecting your work and hiding it in obscurity. I hope creators continue to put themselves out there, make new things, and share beauty with the world. I’m personally going to keep writing stories and making books. It’s something I enjoy and something I’m good at.

Want to keep the discussion going?
Find me on Instagram, Bluesky, and Threads.