The primary Instagram account of FitFam El Paso, a widely followed social media page that shares user-submitted videos and updates about events throughout the city, was taken down Monday afternoon.
A co-owner of FitFam, who asked not to be identified to protect his privacy, said the account has previously been removed by Meta, Instagram’s parent company.
“This is our fourth time having to restart so it’s business as usual,” the co-owner told El Paso Matters. “I don’t know why it happened this time because we weren’t really violating much as of late.”
The deleted account had nearly 700,000 followers. Its backup page, @realfitfamelpaso, had more than 97,000 followers as of Monday afternoon. News of the transition was announced in a post on the new page shortly after 3 p.m. Monday.
In the comments section of that post, users expressed confusion and frustration.
“Don’t they understand this (is) our local news channel??” one user wrote. Another remarked, “Evidently Instagram doesn’t realize how important this account is to the city of EP.”
FitFam frequently posts videos and photos sent in by followers, documenting traffic crashes, bar altercations, animal abuse, food news and other moments from daily life in El Paso.
Its posts occasionally prompt official action: Last week, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man on suspicion of animal abuse after FitFam published a video showing the alleged incident.
All content from the now-deleted main page appears to be lost.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the removal of the account.
According to Instagram’s published guidelines, content is removed if it is found to violate the platform’s Community Guidelines, which cover areas such as harassment, privacy violations, violence, nudity, misinformation and intellectual property infringement. Instagram uses a combination of automated technology and user reports to detect violations. Accounts that repeatedly or severely violate the rules may be disabled without prior warning.
Meta’s Community Standards emphasize authenticity, safety, privacy and dignity as core values guiding enforcement decisions. In some cases, content may be removed even if it doesn’t explicitly violate policy but is deemed to present a risk of harm or requires additional context to assess.
Users whose content or accounts are removed can sometimes request a review of the decision.
Along with user-generated content, FitFam also shares stories from local news outlets, including El Paso Matters. During the 2024 election season, FitFam partnered with El Paso Matters to co-host candidate forums for the mayoral and district attorney races. The events were live streamed on FitFam’s Instagram and drew tens of thousands of views.
FitFam’s large following reflects a broader shift in how people in the United States access news. According to the 2025 Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute released last week, more than half of U.S. adults (54%) now say they get news primarily from social media and video platforms — including Instagram, YouTube and TikTok — surpassing traditional sources such as television (50%) and news websites or apps (48%).
The report also found that younger Americans are especially likely to get news from influencers and alternative media personalities on these platforms.
The post Instagram deletes FitFam El Paso’s main account. Here’s where to find them now. appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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