Hi, I'm Ola and this is 99% able.
I talk here about my life as a disabled independent person.
Last week, I said that today,
I'm gonna talk about the problem with Instagram
that disabled activists and bloggers have recently.
And this is that Instagram is shadow
banning and censoring and deleting disabled people's photos
and
shadow banning their Instagram accounts even if they don't
break the rules of Instagram.
So I interviewed uh Ariel who's an activist and blogger.
His user name handle is Cara dot DM.
I'll put it somewhere here
and he gave me an amazing interview.
You can read about it uh more on my blog and I will link it below.
But
generally the problem is that Instagram
when they are shadow banning or deleting photos or censoring them,
they cut the rage of bloggers.
People can't see these bloggers uh stories or
bloggers can't use
hashtag
and their photos are not visible in the timeline like on this main Instagram page,
even if people follow them, the only way to find their content is while is by uh
writing by searching for the whole
uh user name.
So it
really cuts their R
and
you know, when you're an activist,
the most important thing is to have a wide and a big R
so that people could hear more about your opinions and
more about your activist work.
So, yeah, if you want to read more about it, I have a whole article about it in my blog.
So I'll link it below. And yeah,
I chose to ask, are you about this
interview because he also has a shadow.
But on Instagram, after he posted a photo with uh Julian
Julian's Instagram is the disabled hippie.
And Julian and Ariel posted this picture of themselves uh
for Pride Month and they did not break any regulations,
but they both still get uh shadow
band. I'm pretty sure Julian was shadow band before that.
But uh they checked if
Ariel would um get shadow band too if they post this photo and
he did.
So, yeah, that's why I chose to interview Ariel because he's also very much involved
and in this whole problem of Instagram.
And he also told me a bit about himself.
And as he's a really interesting person, I thought that,
you know, I would tell you what he told me about himself,
about his disabilities because of course, he is a disabled activist and blogger.
You can find a lot of information about
his disabilities because he's very open about it
on his Instagram.
So if you want to read more, because of course, I'm not gonna tell you everything.
Uh If you want to read more, just, just go to his Instagram, follow him,
make sure to follow him because he's amazing
and uh
and read his, uh it's in his highlights, I think the highlight name is personal,
something like that.
And in this personal highlight,
you can see all the information about all of his disabilities.
So the first illness that he mentions is hashimoto immune disease
and he was diagnosed at nine years old.
And fun fact, I guess it's not fun. But, you know, it's a fact,
uh when I was probably about similar age, like nine, maybe 10 years old,
maybe a bit younger.
I'm not sure.
Uh my doctors thought that I have
hashimoto
too,
but then other doctor didn't diagnose me with that
and diagnosed me with only hypothyroid
hypothyroidism.
So, if you're not familiar with any of these thyroid diseases that I mentioned,
which is hashimoto and hypothyroidism,
uh people who have it usually have to,
uh take medications for all of years or even their whole life.
And some of them also have uh some uh really strict diets.
So the next few illnesses that he mentions on his
Instagram are borderline personality disorder and he was diagnosed,
um, when he was 25 years old,
the next one is, uh that he's bipolar and he was diagnosed at 27 years old.
And the next one is complex PTSD and he was diagnosed at 28 years old.
So if you want to get to know more about these illnesses and problems too,
and just again,
go to his Instagram and he's really open about it and he has
a lot of um all of posts about it in his highlights.
So if you're interested or if you have similar problems and want to, you know,
get to know whether someone who has them to
just go to his Instagram page.
So what I found really interesting apart from all
the things that I told you about before,
because a
is generally really interesting person. But what I've never heard about before.
And I think I also told you about it in the last video when I was talking about
uh activists and bloggers who I follow.
And I said there that I would like to uh learn from
Ariel about death positivity.
So the positivity is all about death awareness and realizing and
talking about the fact that we will all eventually die.
And it is challenging people to just talk about it and think about their
uh attitude to death.
He first became aware of death positivity when he was an undergraduate in 2009.
And he said that he uh started taking part in some deaf cafes, but also
took part in
um cemetery preservation activism.
So Ariel also said that this death positivity had a huge impact on his
life because being affiliated with sex workers
and being trans and disabled person himself.
He just became more aware of that
around him, surrounding him and about also his own mortality.
Ok. That's it. So thank you very much for staying till the end of this video.
And uh if you again, if you want to learn more about
Ariel, just check him out on Instagram
and follow him. He is an amazing person.
And again, Ariel, thank you very much for helping me if you're watching this.
So yes, thank you and see you next week. Bye.