Former Celebration Box owner and "Boss Babes" star Iyia Liu's new business has had its Instagram page disabled due to "inauthentic behaviour" after questions were asked around its high follower count.
The new venture, however, says the social media account is down due to "repeated false copyright claims".
The Tidal Hair Waver - Ms Liu's new venture through her company Explosive Social - was being marketed heavily through Instagram using influencers, but questions were asked around how the account had amassed more than 400,000 followers so quickly after the company formed.
The account was created in 2017 and had 10 previous usernames largely themed around celebrities and fashion, with follower analytics sites showing the site had picked up a large number of followers over the past two years.
That's despite Tidal Hair Waver posting for the first time in December last year.
When questioned about the high follower numbers, a spokesperson for Tidal Hair Waver said "it is perfectly normal conduct to buy or sell a business, acquire a business, or merge a business."
A Instagram spokesperson told 1 NEWS last week that the Tidal Hair Waver Instagram account has been disabled due to suspicion it had engaged in "inauthentic behaviour" which violated Instagram's Terms of Use.
The spokesperson said Tidal Hair Waver had appealed the de-activation, and the account was briefly re-published before Instagram's team reviewed the appeal and disabled the account permanently.
"We've seen behaviour on Instagram whereby some usernames are traded or stolen," the Instagram spokesperson said.
"This behaviour violates our policies in a number of ways: we do not allow people to buy, sell or trade aspects of their account, including usernames.
"We are consistently taking steps to disincentivise and stop this behavior, including removing accounts that violate our policies."
Tidal Hair Waver said Ms Liu was unable to comment due to illness relating to the recent birth of her first child.
A spokesperson for the company, who would not provide their name, would not answer repeated questions about whether they had purchased or traded the account from someone else, and denied it had been disabled for inauthentic behaviour.
The spokesperson said their understanding was that the account had been disabled due to what it said was repeated false copyright claims made against the account, which they were planning on appealing.
Tidal Hair Waver is the latest company formed by Ms Liu, after she sold Celebration Box last year.
Celebration Box, which offered gift boxes of sweets, chocolate and desserts, attracted complaints from consumers in 2018 over quality and delivery issues.
The Commerce Commission said Celebration Box may have breached the Fair Trading Act .
News tip or more information? Email Luke Appleby or Follow @lukeappleby
SHARE ME