Indeed, especially for a service like Instagram, your identity is your entire reason for using the service. By taking away the article author's username, they a

Indeed, especially for a service like Instagram, your identity is your entire reason for using the service. By taking away the article author's username, they also took the entire account away, including any content he posted. For most users this represents months or years of interactions and activity they can never get back. Depending on how much they use the service, their entire online identity could potentially be lost.