An innocent video of three dogs looking out a window has landed an Australian business owner in trouble with Meta.
Rochelle Marinato, the owner of a pilates equipment supplier, posted the footage to her personal Instagram account and said she received an email from the social media giant that her account had been suspended for “breaching community guidelines around child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity”.
An AI moderator appeared to have detected an issue with the image and mistaken it for an image of children.
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Marinato told Nine’s 2GB radio she received an email to her business account where she promotes her products and was advised that account had been suspended as well.
She said she was told it was associated with an account which breached community guidelines.
She appealed the decision multiple times and sent more than 22 emails to Meta but she had no help.
“I had no idea that by putting up this little three-second video of the dogs…” she said.
“Even when I received the original email from Meta saying my account was suspended, I thought this will be fine, I’ll get it back shortly.
“But then I received the email about my business account and I was a little more worried but it does give you an option to appeal at first, so I appealed.
“Immediately, my appeal was also assessed by AI and they were denied, so from then my business account was permanently disabled.”
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A Meta spokesperson said Marinato’s case was investigated by the company and restored following an appeal.
“We take action on accounts that violate our policies, and people can appeal if they think we’ve made a mistake,” the spokesperson said.
Before her account was restored, Marinato said she went through the process of paying a third party.
“This is someone my kids actually found on TikTok and their account doesn’t exist anymore,” she said.
“This seems to be what they do.
“The problem is so widespread and I’d heard of people paying to get their accounts back.”
The business owner has spent the last three weeks researching how to get her account back.
“Our revenue dropped by 75 per cent,” she said.
“With losing that account, all of my Instagram advertising was gone as well, because I advertise quite heavily on Meta.
“It was a really significant impact on the business because we rely so heavily on social media, especially in the fitness space.
“We lost everything.”
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