Meta's Oversight Board criticized the company's account-banning process, citing “due process concerns” and a confusing patchwork of rules after reviewing the case of an Instagram account banned for threatening a journalist. While the board agreed the ban itself was justified, it found Meta's penalty systems baffling, noting that Facebook and Instagram handle repeated violations differently and that one of Instagram's main intermediate penalties, restricting livestreaming, doesn't even apply to accounts with fewer than 1,000 followers. The board said it received more than 750 public comments from users who couldn't appeal bans, never learned why their accounts were disabled, or saw decisions made by AI with no human review, and it urged Meta to offer a real appeals process and notify users when AI penalizes them.
