Over the past five years, Meta’s Oversight Board has weighed in on everything from Donald Trump’s suspension of Facebook to AI deepfakes. The board is now tackling another thorny issue: Meta’s rules for deactivating user accounts.
The board announced earlier this year that it would explore improving the transparency of the process, which is often frustratingly opaque. The watchdog group looked into the issue following a referral from Meta regarding an Instagram account with 70,000 followers that was banned after posting threatening messages targeting a journalist.
In its decision, the Oversight Board says Meta was correct in banning the account, but the case raised “serious questions” about how the company dealt with such behavior and “due process concerns” about how it disabled accounts. Because this is something of a test case, the board is not making formal recommendations to Meta, although it does highlight a number of potential improvements. His analysis also highlights the confusing patchwork of rules and sanctions that lead to bans on the Meta platform, as well as the great frustration this causes among users.
For example, the board notes that Meta has remarkably different processes for Facebook and Instagram. Although both platforms penalize accounts with “warnings,” repeated warnings may have different results. On Facebook, accounts may be subject to temporary suspensions for repeated violations before being banned outright. But such a sanction does not exist on Instagram, says the board of directors. Instead, Meta restricts accounts from Instagram’s live streaming feature or will remove their account from recommendations (which Instagram users often call a “shadowban”).
The Oversight Board rightly points out how bizarre it is that restricting livestreaming is one of the top “middleman” penalties on Instagram when the feature isn’t even available to all accounts (it requires a minimum of 1,000 followers). “For violations in permanent posts, a penalty that directly corresponds to violating behavior by suspending a user’s ability to post (for example, putting their account in read-only mode for a specified period of time) would be more likely to influence behavior,” the board notes.
The forum also addresses the long-simmering frustration among Facebook and Instagram users whose accounts are deactivated. The group says it has received more than 750 public comments on the matter, in addition to the “countless” complaints board members regularly receive from people whose accounts have been disabled.
“Many commenters wrote about systems not working, claiming they were unable to appeal Meta’s decision to deactivate their account, never received an explanation as to why their account was deactivated, or were unable to upload their content,” the forum wrote. “Many of these users also noted that decisions appeared to be made automatically, without human oversight, even when appealing the deactivation of long-standing and widely followed accounts.”
In its guidance to Meta, the board suggests that the company provide a better appeals process for users to provide written explanations and that users be notified when AI is used to penalize their account. The Board is proposing that information about account bans can be added to Meta’s transparency reports for additional visibility. The group also advises Meta to provide a dedicated channel where “high-risk targets of violence and their representatives” can report serious threats against them.
Given that this matter is described as a “pilot project,” it is unclear whether Meta plans to make substantial policy changes in response to the board’s criticism. But there is still some hope for those who want Meta to make improvements. The board says it plans to accept more cases in the future involving disabled accounts, which will hopefully give them a better chance to influence some reforms.
