Woman loses £25,000 after posting video of her dogs to Instagram
A business owner claims she lost '75 percent' of her revenue after Meta was said to have suspended her accounts over an innocent video of her dogs.
Rochelle Marinato, the managing director of Pilates World Australia, says she received an email from Meta - the company which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp - after sharing a video of three of her dogs looking out of a window on her personal account on 28 June.
As reported by Sky News Australia, the mum-of-four said Instagram accused her of breaching community standards on 'child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity'.
Her personal account was suspended, as well as her Pilates World’s business account.
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“I received an email from Meta letting me know my account had been suspended," she told the outlet. "There were no humans in the video."
The Gold Coast entrepreneur, who has been in touch with Meta 22 times, appealed the suspension - but it was denied by Meta AI after it disabled her accounts.
She claims sales dropped by $50,000 AUD (£25,000) when the Pilates World Instagram was removed from search.
Rochelle said her lawyer has since sent a letter to Meta’s head offices in California and Sydney, but hasn't heard back from them.
As a result, the businesswoman decided to get in touch with a third party to recover the accounts because 'business was being impacted so significantly that I was willing to take the risk'.
"It worked, and we got our accounts back," she added. “It's really heavy, actually, to think that is something that's going to be associated with my business name and with my digital footprint. It's really, really scary, and all because of a mistake by AI.
“So it's impossible to know what meta will find a breach and what it won't, because that video was of three dogs. There was no humans in the video. So it's almost impossible to avoid in the future.”
Frustrated by Meta's alleged suggestion of 'child sexual exploitation', Rochelle told Daily Mail Australia: "It's a horrible, disgusting allegation to have thrown your way and to be associated with. People will think we've done something wrong to lose our account.
"It's scary that AI has this power and also gets it this wrong. We could be on a slippery slope."
A Meta spokesperson told Sky News Australia: “We’re always working to improve the enforcement of all our policies to help keep our community safe.
“We haven’t seen evidence of a significant increase in incorrect enforcement.”
LADbible Group has contacted Meta for comment.
Anish Vij