A few months ago my dad went through this. He runs a community theater and a small business — both of those pages were also taken offline, which directly affected both organizations. Eventually he got his account back, and when he did, his ads account had run up a $700+ balance in a language he doesn't recognize. Clearly his account was compromised, and the attackers left an easy enough paper trail that he was able to get his account back after weeks of fighting. He still can't run ads for his business. For many others, it seems they were banned without explanation. Some can't even access the download of their personal data — which I believe is legally required in some jurisdictions — to either preserve memories and photos or try to find an explanation for why they were kicked off the platform. A small few have successfully hounded Meta's support and regained access, but this seems rare. Some have even filed in small claims court to at least get access to their own data.
A few months after my dad's ordeal, I'm now disabled. According to Meta's help page, there is no appeal process. No email, no notification — I just tried to check Messenger, my primary way of contacting several friends and family members, and I was logged out. On logging back in I saw the ban message. Following steps others took on that subreddit, I paid for Meta Verified through Instagram and was able to talk to someone on the phone pretty quickly. They said the tool they have access to kept giving them errors, and all they could do was give me a case number and tell me to keep checking back until I got an email or an appeal button showed up. (I think even Meta's own support is confused about the difference between Suspended and Disabled.) Obviously, neither of those things happened.
I gave my case number to a friend who works at Meta, like I helped my dad do, to hopefully get the ticket escalated. They told me "Disabled" is really severe and not to expect much. Supposedly, some AI system automatically scans for behavior that may lead to a ban. I don't post. I don't comment. All I do is occasionally doomscroll, buy/sell home goods on Marketplace, and chat on Messenger. I was under the impression Messenger was E2E encrypted — and while I'd fully expect them to have a backdoor, I think that label means absolutely nothing if a bot is regularly scanning that content.
For me, this is a bit of an inconvenience. I still have my Instagram and WhatsApp, so whatever Community Guidelines the bot determined I violated apparently only apply to Facebook. But I think it's pretty awful on Meta's part in a number of ways. They're big enough that people rely on them for day-to-day communication. Groups are a tool used for organizing. Getting banned seems potentially damaging to credibility. And while I understand a business trying to cover their ass by not providing a reason, I'm still uneasy — did I get banned because the bot made a bad call, or was my account compromised, implying my email or 2FA might also be compromised? And probably most damaging: Facebook is where people do business. Taking down business pages or removing their operator from the platform can seriously affect a business's credibility and day-to-day operations.
