Associated Incidents
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Over the past few days, Eyewitness News has been getting numerous emails from viewers complaining that they feel they have been wrongly locked out of their Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp accounts for violating community standards.
Adding to their frustration, they say they can't get a hold of anyone at Meta to help them out, so they're turning to 7 on Your Side Investigates.
"I reached out to Channel 7 because I was desperate," said Natalia, a pediatric ICU nurse living in Azusa who doesn't want her last name published.
Facebook, Instagram users from across the US say Meta wrongly suspended their accounts
Natalia and her boyfriend Gavino Cervantes keep trying to log onto their Instagram accounts, but end up getting a message saying, "We disabled your account."
It's been a huge headache for them ever since July 2 when Natalia got a notification telling her, "This is because your account, or activity on it, doesn't follow our community standards on child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity."
Natalia calls that accusation "vile."
"It's ironic," she said. "It's even more offensive because as part of what I do, I advocate for children who have been assaulted, who have been sexually abused, and I take that very seriously."
Because her email is connected to Cervantes' professional Instagram account, the page for his general contracting business called Gavin's Quality Construction has also been disabled.
"I was in the works with a lot of people already messaging me like, 'Hey, can you come do a bid? Could you help us, like, look at our backyard? Give us a quote?'" he said. "I had probably like five customers reaching out to me that day that it got taken down."
Marty Macias of Long Beach also got flagged for violating "community standards of child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity."
"Super shocking because the reason they gave me made no sense to me," she said.
Both Macias and Natalia submitted appeals in hopes of getting their accounts back, but so far, they haven't had any luck. Plus, all of their accounts owned by Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, have been disabled.
Macias used WhatsApp to communicate with family in Mexico, while Natalia lost 15 years of memories of beachside vacations and special moments she had on her Facebook page.
Meta has yet to respond to ABC7's request for comment, but many of those who have had their accounts shut down suspect an AI program wrongfully flagged them.
"To me, this story isn't really about social media. It is about the over reliance of the early rollout of AI," explained USC Communications Professor and Social Media Expert Karen North. "Unfortunately, we are human beings, and we are trying to interact with software these days."
Natalia and Macias said what makes this so frustrating is there's no Meta customer service help - that they know of - that's helping them out.
7 On Your Side Investigates has given their emails and usernames to the media department of Meta and will keep following up with them until we hear back.
If you depend on a Meta platform for your business or just want to secure your account, you can now sign up for what's called Meta Verified. The cost starts at around $15 a month and it comes with chat and email support to help with issues like this.
However, after the publication of this report, several Meta verified users reached out to ABC7 saying that despite paying a monthly fee for that service, it hasn't helped them retrieve disabled accounts.
We have asked Meta to respond to that as well.