Camille Hanson woke one night in March to a notification: Meta had flagged her Facebook and Instagram accounts for deletion. She and her husband ran an English-teaching business there with nearly a million followers. Meta said she had breached its rules on fraud and deception, the New York Times reported.
She appealed. A week later Meta denied it. “All your information will be permanently deleted,” the reply read. “You cannot request another review of this decision.” The Hansons run the business from Portugal, so it was, as her husband put it, like someone shutting your storefront overnight.
Humans out of the loop
In March, Meta said it would hand more power to AI to judge which accounts break its rules and to handle the appeals. Months later, it laid off thousands of staff, including people who did exactly that work.
More than 60,000 users have since signed a petition asking Meta to explain its bans and to let a human review appeals. Reddit forums have filled with the same complaint: an automated system deletes an account, and no person answers.
