Small businesses struggle after wrongful Facebook, Instagram suspensions
Meta has been accused of suspending the accounts of WA businesses, citing child abuse material as the reason. (ABC South West WA: Pip Waller)
In short:
Businesses across Western Australia have accused tech giant Meta of wrongfully removing their personal and business social media accounts.
The tech giant often cited a breach of its community standards for the removals, linked to the false detection of child abuse material.
What's next?
A Meta spokesperson says those affected can appeal if they think the tech giant has made a mistake.
Small businesses across regional Western Australia say their trade has taken a significant hit after tech giant Meta wrongfully accused them of spreading child abuse material via their social media pages.
The ABC has spoken to multiple business owners who were horrified after Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, suspended their pages after falsely alleging the pages contained child exploitation material.
The removals often led to the suspension of personal accounts linked to those businesses.
Samantha Enticknap's makeup business and personal accounts across Meta's platforms were removed. (ABC South West WA: Pip Waller)
Samantha Enticknap runs a make-up business in Margaret River, 271 kilometres south of Perth, and said all of her social media accounts were suspended on July 14.
"I opened my email and saw due to sexually explicit content and nudity with children I had been suspended," Ms Enticknap said.
"I have a make-up page with pictures of make-up on women. There's no nudity.
"It was horrifying to see this accusation and it really affected both my business and myself emotionally."
'Breach of community standards'
Ms Enticknap was told by Meta her account had been suspended because it had breached the tech company's community standards.
Cindy Kempton runs a fitness company across the Kimberley and the Pilbara and has been without her social media pages for six weeks.
Meta, again, cited child abuse material as the reason for the suspension.
"Which is completely untrue. We very rarely, if ever, put children up on our Instagram because of the regulations surrounding children," Ms Kempton said.
The social media pages of six of Cindy Kempton's fitness companies were removed after they were flagged by Meta. (ABC Kimberley: Ruby Littler)
"We've lost tens of thousands of followers and the enquiries for our business dropped dramatically because there was no way of people contacting us.
"It just caused so many issues, not only for us but also for our communities and our business."
Both businesses outlined significant difficulty with Meta's appeals process, due to the inability to make contact with anyone in the company.
Meta told Samantha Enticknap that her accounts were suspended because of a breach in the platform's community standards. (Supplied)
The ABC understands Meta uses a combination of humans and AI technology to find and remove accounts that break its rules.
However, according to the tech giant, there has been no increase in incorrect enforcement of its rules.
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said the company took action on accounts that violated its policies.
"People can appeal if they think we've made a mistake," the spokesperson said.
'Own the house, own the land'
The Small Business Development Corporation is a WA government agency that provides free advice to small businesses across the state.
Director Caragh Waller said a lot of businesses were under the misapprehension that their business page was their asset, but that was not the case when it was through a private company such as Meta.
"We would advise businesses to be careful about having all your eggs in the Meta basket," Ms Waller said.
"It's akin to building a house on someone else's land. Your house is your business, so make sure you own the land.
"It's a huge financial hit [for these businesses], but it's also reputational damage to be linked to something quite unsavoury on the internet."
When questioned by the ABC, Meta restored Ms Enticknap's accounts, but Ms Kempton remains offline.
Cindy Kempton says the closure of her Meta accounts has caused a string of issues for her business. (ABC Kimberley: Ruby Littler)
In the space of three weeks, Ms Enticknap said she had an 80 per cent loss in revenue.
"It's just a minefield of knowing who to speak to, who to go to, how we get our businesses back," she said.
"We're just small businesses trying to make money.
"Just give us an explanation of what we've done and a better review process."