(Photo by Wirestock, via Magnific)
ORLANDO | Meta removed the Instagram accounts of Anthem Orlando and SAVOY Orlando two days after Orlando Pride, citing policy violations.
Mike Vacirca, owner of Anthem, says Meta claimed the account didn’t follow the “Community Standards” but didn’t name a post or a policy. Vacirca says he reached out to Meta and opened up the case.
“We have been reaching out to leadership at Meta, both through LinkedIn as well as through Threads, attempting to get some kind of review going,” he shares. “And then I did some research and it turns out that this has been a trend that’s occurring across the nation.”
Several LGBTQ+ businesses nationally and internationally have fallen victim to a murky and unknowable suspension process at Meta which, per reporting in the New York Times, is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence bots for content moderation.
Another local group that was effected by Meta was Midnight Mascs, an Orlando burlesque group. Their Instagram account was permanently banned for violating its terms, citing “illegal adoption,” “prostitution,” and “human sex trafficking.”
It took six days but the original Anthem account was restored. Vacirca did make a backup account to keep just in case it is needed in the future.
“It seems to me that the community standard content moderation automatic classifiers are being exploited and abused by malicious groups that are targeting our community,” Vacirca says.
Brandon Llewellyn, owner of SAVOY, says Meta removed the account due to a violation of its human exploitation policy. He says the allegation is completely false, and Meta has never pointed to a single post or any specific activity.
He says he appealed immediately, but that same day, Instagram emailed him saying it had reviewed the account and found no violation and apologized for the mistake. He was supposed to have access to the account but the account was never restored.
Instead, Llewellyn received a final notice saying it’s permanently disabled, no further appeals are allowed, and the data will be deleted.
“We got the notification that they got the appeal, and then they said it would be reversed, and then we got another notification saying that our page was disabled entirely,” Llewellyn shares.
He has opened two cases with Meta Business Support and followed up on both, but there has been no response. Llewellyn made another account on Instagram and will post events and updates to come.
Watermark Out News has reached out to Meta for comment about the account’s suspension and will update if a response is recieved.
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