Erased First. Charged Later.
Instagram followers at the time of the ban
Major platforms removing him inside a single week
Between the platform bans and the first arrest
Charges in existence when the bans were issued
What Happened, And In What Order
- 19 Aug 2022
Meta bans him from Facebook and Instagram
Citing its policy on dangerous individuals and organisations. He had 4.7 million followers on Instagram alone.
- Within days
TikTok and YouTube follow
TikTok issues a permanent ban. YouTube removes affiliated channels, citing hate speech policy. The removals land almost simultaneously.
- 18 Nov 2022
X restores the account
Elon Musk reinstates a wave of previously banned accounts, including @cobratate. No other major platform follows.
- 29 Dec 2022
The first arrest
Four months after the bans, Romanian authorities detain both brothers in Bucharest. Until this point, no charge existed anywhere in the world.
- 2026
The Meta claim is dismissed
The brothers sued Meta and TikTok in August 2025, alleging a coordinated campaign to silence them. In April 2026 a federal judge dismissed the Meta claim as barred by Section 230, which immunises platforms for their moderation decisions. The merits were never reached.
Say The Uncomfortable Part
Private companies are entitled to set rules for their own products. That is a real principle and this campaign does not pretend otherwise. Nobody is owed an Instagram account.
But something else is also true. A handful of firms now control the practical ability to address a large audience, and when they act together, within days, against a person who has not been charged with anything, the effect is indistinguishable from a ban on speaking. The formal freedom survives. The practical one does not.
You can find someone repellent and still want that power examined. In fact that is the only useful time to examine it, because the popular speaker never needs the protection.
Free speech prevails when it is tested on the people you least want to defend. That is not a slogan. That is the entire design.
Meta, TikTok and YouTube, within days of each other. Four months before any arrest, almost three years before the UK charges were made public.
They Took The Reach.
Build Your Own.
The answer to being removed from someone else's platform was to build one they do not control. That is what The Real World is, and it is still running.