Many Instagram users are sharing their frustrations and confusions after the social media platform’s parent company, Meta, deleted or disabled their accounts seemingly without cause. Talon Doak is a DJ and music producer in Calgary and said his Instagram account for business was disabled without warning on April 26. “I submitted an appeal right away. They said it takes one to two days to get it back, and it’s been about 130 days since, and I’ve had no updates since then,” he said. “Sucks for my business. (It’s) been a tough four months.” A note to Doak said his account was wrongly flagged for “not meeting our Community Standards on child sexual exploitation and nudity.” “I don’t even swear on my account, so that was quite a shock to me,” he said. “The only thing I had just posted before I went to bed was about DJing; it had nothing close to do with what they said.” Doak had accumulated 10,000 followers on his account and was receiving more than a million impressions per month leading up to his account being disabled, which he relied on to showcase his work and find clients. “It’s like the 2025 version of your resumé or LinkedIn, especially for creatives and small business owners. Without it, it’s kind of like you don’t exist because that’s where people check first,” he said. Doak said he’s tried to appeal through Meta’s channels but is often met with an automatic response. “The biggest issue is summer is always my biggest season. Not having it, I missed DJing the Calgary Stampede, I missed the festivals I did and I just got back from doing the Frosh run in Ontario, which is big stages, and I couldn’t share that with anyone,” he said. Hundreds of Meta users have faced similar issues, according to media reports. The issue appears to be linked to Meta’s AI content monitoring system, which analyzes text, audio and video content to determine if it violates the company’s community standards. “The problem is these automated systems often make mistakes, and what we’re seeing here is people getting locked out of their accounts because of the mistakes AI is making,” said Richard Zhao, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Calgary. Zhao said Meta has an obligation to address users’ issues with humans and not AI-automated responses. “Meta has billions of accounts, billions of users, but that doesn’t excuse them from their ethical responsibilities they have to their users, and that includes being able to respond appropriately,” he said. “If they are using AI for moderation and it’s making mistakes, then Meta has the responsibility to ensure users have a way to report these issues and have them addressed in a fair and timely way.” Zhao said these mistakes act as a reminder people should always have backups of their own content. “Never trust your data, your pictures, your videos with one social media company alone and put all your eggs in one basket,” he said. CTV News reached out to Meta for comment but did not hear back. Its website says it uses both artificial intelligence and human reviewers to moderate content and adds its policies are constantly evolving. “Sometimes, a piece of content requires further review, and our AI sends it to a human review team to take a closer look. In these cases, review teams make the final decision, and our technology learns and improves from each decision. Over time—after learning from thousands of human decisions—the technology gets better,” its website says. Jesse Vetterl from Cochrane also had his personal account permanently shut down at the end of August. He works as a paramedic and was horrified to see his account was wrongfully flagged for violating terms around child exploitation and nudity. “It’s not just about losing social media; it’s about being labelled with something so harsh and devastating. It needs to be sorted out,” he said. Vetterl believes Meta needs to have a better appeals process and better recourse for those who are mistakenly flagged on the platform. “It’s about accountability. It’s damaging to people’s reputations. Yes, they need to control the problem of people violating the terms, but for the million of people who are presumably innocent, there needs to be a better process,” he said.
