Meta 'repeatedly ignored independent disputes body' over cases of wrongly banned users
Meta has repeatedly ignored an independent body raising cases of people wrongly banned from their accounts.
Meta has repeatedly ignored an independent body raising cases of people wrongly banned from their accounts.
The Appeals Centre Europe has assessed 4,600 cases of users on Facebook, Instagram and Threads who claimed they had been wrongly banned, but they say Meta largely never replies to the disputes.
In its transparency report, the Appeals Centre Europe said: "In the vast majority of cases related to account suspensions, platforms are unable or unwilling to provide the content which allows us to independently review their decisions."
The organisation is one of several independent settlement bodies allowing those in the UK to challenge social media platforms on their decisions, which includes content moderation and account bans.
Online platforms are, under EU law, told to "engage in good faith" with Apples Centre Europe, although they are not legally bound to follow its decision.
The report has explored content flagged which users thought should be removed, which included over 1,400 case of alleged hate speech.
As reported by the BBC, chief executive Thomas Hughes added: "In more than two-thirds of our decisions about hate speech, we found that platforms failed to enforce their own policies and left up hateful content."
For Facebook, 61 percent of potential hate speech - including misogynistic, racist, homophobic and transphobic posts - was left up, while that was 74 percent on Instagram.
By comparison, YouTube's rate was 58 percent, while TikTok was 83 percent.
The body added: "In the nearly 3,000 decisions where we were able to review the content, we disagreed with the platform 59 percent of the time."
