On Friday April 12th we discovered the unpleasant surprise of The Brick Post being blocked. The reason for this was our post on the Minions Banana Car.
We’d like to clarify a few things on the matter and why we feel this is not right. First of all, we are not official RLFM (registered fan media). This means we have to get all our information from secondary sources like retailers. And because we don’t receive the official information, we often have to guess when embargo will be lifted on a new set.
We are not a website that wants to leak things. We sometimes see things early and decide against posting it before the embargo is lifted. Especially with licensed sets we try to be as careful as possible with the limited information that we have.
So when a certified LEGO store posts set pictures, we assume it’s fair and safe to share it, in the end we are promoting LEGO products. And if we got it wrong and were asked to remove content, we would have done so.
Instead of being decent about it we are faced with a hostile treatment by having our account blocked. We feel we did nothing wrong and couldn’t be aware there was a problem with the post. We feel this is abuse of the opportunities given by Instagram for corporate censorship.
https://www.instagram.com/thebrickpost_extra
https://www.instagram.com/patrick_brickpost
In the mean time, please follow our other accounts to stay up-to-date with all the LEGO news, reviews and more!
What is your reaction?
YES!
I like it
It's OK
Not Sure
No!
Unless you were sleeping under a rock the last week, you probably knew there was a problem with these images before you posted them. Even the first reaction on brickset is calling them out for this (they removed the images on request of NBC Universal). So I guess NBC Universal is behind the blocking of the account. Lego is probably behind an NDA themselves. I don’t think NBC Universal cares, about what rules Lego is using for these leaks. They’ve every right to protect their IP.
We acquired the images and information from an official source, so we shared them. We’re not part of the LAN (LEGO Ambassador Network) so knew nothing about the removal until too late. A quick message to us and we’d have removed the images, simple. It would have been far quicker than filing a report and waiting for Instagram to take action.
I’m so sorry this happened to you! I know how hard you work on posts, shared and promoting all thing Lego! This was very unfair to block your account!