SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Now to a 7 On Your Side Investigates follow-up. Last month, we told you 7 On Your Side got Facebook and Instagram users accounts restored after reaching out to Meta. The accounts were mistakenly banned during a teen safety push. After that story ran, we heard from dozens of viewers and reached back out to Meta, which agreed to review more accounts.
We sent the social media platform 70 handles to review. Within a few days, many of those same viewers were emailing ABC7 News to say, “thank you.”
Mom Jessica Arena’s Instagram account is a tribute to her dogs and baby.
Whether watching the rain, sharing toys or just spending time together, they are inseparable.
So Jessica was stunned when Meta banned the profile.
“For child sexual exploitation which was extremely shocking to me because I have no idea where that came from,” said Arena.
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Neither does Tina Peterson. Her Instagram account is dedicated to her design work. She also linked her teenage son’s account to her profile to protect his safety online.
Her accounts were banned as well for the same reason.
“It was nothing but cycling videos and his ski racing videos,” said Peterson.
Peterson appealed.
“But within less than 20 or 30 minutes it was permanently banned,” said Peterson.
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At the time, we inquired about Charles Fossett-Lee’s account and Diego Urbina’s account.
Both given the same reason for the ban, child sexual exploitation, and both had their accounts restored after 7 On Your Side Investigates inquired.
In an emailed statement at the time, a spokesperson wrote, “We take action on accounts that violate our policies, and people can appeal if they think we’ve made a mistake.”
The Meta spokesperson also said, our teams reviewed the accounts you flagged and found they had been removed in error.
Meta would not say “how” or “why.”
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David Graunke is Founder and CEO of Safetykit, an AI platform for rule enforcement and content moderation with clients like Eventbrite and Substack.
“This is what everyone in this role, so anyone that works in trust and safety or content moderation is thinking about, how do we find the bad guys without hurting the good guys,” said Graunke.
He says their accuracy is around 95% and while Meta is not a Safetykit client, he understands what the social media giant is up against.
“Human accuracy is typically a lot lower than what you would expect it’s about 80%. That’s because humans as intelligent as they are have a difficult time enforcing policies consistently over and over and over again,” said Graunke.
Meta previously told 7 On Your Side Investigates it uses a combination of people and technology to find and remove accounts that break their rules.
Despite the recent crack down Meta also said it had not seen evidence of a significant increase in incorrect enforcement of its rules.
Meta agreed to review approximately 70 handles from viewers who contacted us.
“You were kind of my last line of hope,” said Arena.
ABC7 News emailed the list on August 12th and within two days we started hearing back from viewers.
“I was very happy,” said Peterson.
“Well you absolutely got my accounts back because there was no way I could talk to anybody,” she continued.
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Jessica Arena’s account was also restored.
“I am probably just eternally grateful that you guys were able to help,” said Arena.
On August 15, the Meta Spokesperson told me teams were in the process of going through the list of approximately 70 handles.
ABC7 News reached out to Meta 4 times since then, including this week, but we have not yet heard back, so we don’t know exactly how many accounts of the 70 handles we shared with Meta have been restored. We’re still receiving tons of emails from people across the country asking for help. While we’re not able to help everyone, Meta encourages people to appeal the decision if they believe their profile was banned by mistake.
Take a look at more stories and videos by 7 On Your Side.
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