Jane Bayer is trying to get Meta’s attention after the company’s AI moderation program suspended her personal and business accounts without explanation.
PARKER, Colo. — For a little more than a year, Jane Bayer has been building her small online business, which was reliant on Facebook and Instagram for advertising and customer engagement.
But now, her accounts are suspended without explanation, she said.
“They accuse you of something, and then there’s no human interaction,” Bayer said.
Bayer said her accounts were suspended last month, which has cost her business thousands of dollars. Bayer believes someone may have hacked into her account after she bought advertisements on Facebook. However, the company disabled her account by claiming one of her postings violated Meta’s terms of service.
Bayer is not the only business owner with this situation. There are multiple media reports across the country that show Meta’s AI moderation program seems to be arbitrarily suspending Facebook and Instagram accounts without explanation and leaving users with no ability to reach a human being for an appeal or explanation.
An online petition now has more than 50,000 signatures calling for Meta to fix a broken AI moderation program.
“They’re making billions of dollars. Why can’t they be much more responsive to people who are having issues with their platform?” asked Steven Beaty, a professor of computer science at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Beaty said the AI moderation system is flawed and needs to be tuned.
“They should have a whole lot more people instead — real intelligence, if you will — instead of artificial intelligence to help people out who have been blocked,” Beaty said.
Bayer said she has spent weeks trying to get someone from Meta to answer her questions over phone calls and emails, but has yet to receive a response.
This month, she has filed a small claims civil lawsuit hoping her plea for help will reach a human at the company, even if it is an attorney.
“It’s horrible because I can’t communicate with anybody. And I mean, Facebook and Instagram is- that’s the key. That’s how everybody shops now, and I don’t have it anymore,” she said.
9NEWS has reached out to Meta’s media team about the issue, but has yet to receive a response.
