If Facebook or Instagram ever locks you out of an account you've had for years — with no clear explanation and no person to call — you are not imagining things, and you are not alone.
What Meta's own watchdog found. On June 5, 2026, the Oversight Board — the independent body Meta itself set up to review its content moderation — published its first ruling on an account disablement case. It upheld Meta's decision to permanently disable the specific Instagram account in question, which had posted threats and slurs. But the board used the case to call out much bigger problems: it found Meta's system for sorting violations into "severe" and "egregious" categories, which determines whether an account gets a warning or an instant permanent ban, to be "unclear and often contradictory." The board's most pointed recommendation was that people should be told whether and how AI was involved in reviewing their account and deciding any penalty against it — something Meta currently doesn't disclose.
Thousands say they were caught up in it. A petition from the Canadian nonprofit People Over Platforms, titled "Hold Meta Accountable for Wrongful Account Disabling," has drawn tens of thousands of signatures over 2026 from people who say Facebook, Instagram, or Threads accounts — including long-running small business pages — were disabled without warning, often citing "severe" categories like child exploitation, with no human reachable to explain why. Local news outlets including CBS affiliates in Baltimore and Philadelphia have covered similar cases. Meta disputes that AI is the problem: a company spokesperson told Boston 25 News that its current moderation tools make 13% fewer mistakes than human reviewers did and catch 10% more genuine violations — but didn't dispute that appeals can be slow or unclear.
If it happens to you, here's what to actually do. Log into the affected account (not a new one) and follow the "Request a review" or "Disagree with decision" prompt that appears on the disabled-account screen — for Instagram, that's usually under "Review details" in the app. You have 180 days from the date your account was disabled to file this appeal; after that, Meta treats the account as permanently gone. Gather what you'll need before you start, since the form can't be saved partway through: the email or phone number tied to the account, and a government ID if asked. Some appeals now require a short video selfie, where you turn your head in different directions on camera so Meta can match your face to your profile photos — if that step fails, you can usually retry it.
For a business Page, check Meta Business Suite's account status or support tools rather than the personal account flow. Meta says most reviews are completed within about 48 hours, though there's no guarantee, and a meaningful share of first appeals get denied — a second appeal is generally looked at by a more senior reviewer, so it's worth filing again rather than giving up after one rejection.