Meta repeatedly snubs EU body over Facebook and Instagram user bans

The EU's attitude to American tech firms is weird. On the one hand, they have extrajudicial private entities they outsource censorship requests to ("trusted flaggers"), which the companies have to follow at the threat of massive fines and which therefore creates the incentive to ban quickly.

On the other hand, there is stuff like this where they created another arbitrary "voluntary" mechanism to punish the companies for banning too much. I think ultimately the EU just wants a set of rules to use as a pretense to levy fines on big tech.

> An independent body which hears disputes from social media users in the EU says Meta virtually never replies when it raises cases of people who say they have been wrongly banned from their accounts.

Yup, "victim" of exactly that here. Had a restaurant with a Facebook + Instagram page, as bunch of people find new places that way apparently, maybe 20-30% of the people we talked to found us via those properties, so hard to just give up even if you disagree, unless you're in a really great location already, which we weren't.

At one point, our Instagram page was banned, no reason provided, and impossible to reach a human, the Facebook page continued working without issues. Must have reached out and "appealed" like 10 times, eventually we gave up and the page seems to remain banned today still.

I know a person managing social media for an elected politician in Poland.

On the first day Meta banned the account for impersonation. Protest was closed automatically within a hour with the usual "sorry you aint happy with this but the ban stands" response.

There was no way to contact a human about this... unless you buy meta premium support or whatever that is called. That will give you a human handler to contact!

This person asked for a paper work to verify. Next day after receiving the paper work, account was unbanned. For 15 minutes. It was then banned automatically for impersonation.

At this point the handler suggested not naming the account after politician but instead making it "Fans of the Jane Doe " page or something like that.

My understanding is that this was then escalated to one of ministries who did reach out Meta in Poland with request for explanations, after which account was unbanned and flagged as verified by Meta to exclude it from future automatic bans.

The EU should ban his yacht from being serviced in the EU.

https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/launchpad/location/#TRPL...

At this point, meta could buy the EU.

Meta on Facebook: posts about contraception, HIV or family planning will get you banned. Posting photos of drowned migrants on Italian beaches with hateful messages? That’s cool, bro free speech.

I don't know if the regulations are reasonable (often there is government overreach) but I don't mind if they were just banned outright.

I don't think Meta crates economic civic value.

The time spent away from Meta would be better used for almost any other purpose.

Feels 'authoritarian' but the same reason FB/IN is bad for teens is the same reason it's bad for regular people.

I mean, obviously we can't go around banning companies, but still ... it would be good.

Normally I'd go - more fines against Meta are great. So, no problem with that.

But ...

This whole "hate speech" is nothing but censorship. I understand that these greedy US giant corporations ruin a lot and abuse the heck out of everyone, but the EU is also incredibly incompetent here. What the heck is even "hate" speech? We are forbidden from criticism? The USA has the freedom of speech amendment. What's the EU solution here - arbitrary censorship? I totally disagree with that notion, and whether it is Meta or anyone else, this is a principle question. The EU should use all that money to invest into more important things than this fakeroy "hate" speech.

Fuck Zuckerberg, fuck its ilk of careless evil billionaires.

Honestly Meta is just plain stupid. These formats are an informal way to avoid strong regulation but solve problems and used in many settings of govermental regulation as a first try. Snubbing them will increase the chance of hard regulation.

I guess Zucki, Meta and SV folks (proofed on HN itself) just drunk too much "EU is declining because of regulation" and it will end like Lightning and Apple.

I hope they find them a billion dollars a day

Unless a user is paying money or otherwise in a legally binding contract that would be breached by a ban, I see no reason why a company shouldn't be able to ban them even on a whim. Having an account on a company's platform is a privilege, not a right.

The EU should ban his yacht from being serviced in the EU.

https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/launchpad/location/#TRPL...

Fuck Zuckerberg, fuck its ilk of careless evil billionaires.

You assume that the EU acts in a coherent manner.

I think that premise is wrong - there are many interest groups, and by luck/lobbying/reaching critical mass/... they manage to put one of their interests into a law.

As an EU citizen I am glad there's at least some overwatch and control over these companies. I don't trust them at all. In the US unregulated capitalism is fine: everything and his mother are for sale. Here, not so much.

The EU fines are not enough to get the US tech companies to change, or even leave completely. But they are enough to continually fund the EU regulatory bureaucracy itself. So this arm of the government really only exists to preserve itself.

I would be interested to see how many EU government jobs the US tech fines are supporting. Maybe Meta or Google is indirectly the largest employer in Brussels?

It's almost as though they want to be the government making the rules, rather than sitting back and letting the likes of META do whatever they want. The imperfect approach comes down to the reality of politics.

There are no fines at all in this story.

There are no fines, this is about having recourse when big tech randomly bans you. Which you will remember, is a very common outcry on this very page.

This is just an uninformed EU rant.

I think the censorship framing is quite manipulative. It is removal of unlawful content.

Is removing CSAM censorship? What about snuff?

If no, then where do you draw the line? Why can't our democratically elected governments decide what is and isn't lawful? Why should foreign Big Capital be allowed to decide instead?

> Had a restaurant with a Facebook + Instagram page

But this here is already a prior problem - you depend on these US companies in the first place.

The EU could easily make it free to have a homepage associated for no cost. That would be something. Everyone gets a homepage for free, say, one business per EU citizen. Why is the system screwing us over to depend on US companies here?

I know a person managing social media for an elected politician in Poland.

On the first day Meta banned the account for impersonation. Protest was closed automatically within a hour with the usual "sorry you aint happy with this but the ban stands" response.

There was no way to contact a human about this... unless you buy meta premium support or whatever that is called. That will give you a human handler to contact!

This person asked for a paper work to verify. Next day after receiving the paper work, account was unbanned. For 15 minutes. It was then banned automatically for impersonation.

At this point the handler suggested not naming the account after politician but instead making it "Fans of the Jane Doe " page or something like that.

except you dont' get a "human" when you buy "premium support", you get a chatbot with elevated access. source: ex-colleague who use to work at CSE team for IG and Whatsapp.

> It was then banned automatically for impersonation.

Sorry, but if it wouldn't have been banned then there would be 1000x legitimately looking fake BOT accounts impersonating every politician in Europe, which IMHO is a lot worse considering the disinformation campaigns of trolls and foreign adversaries, so of course Meta would err on the side of caution here and assume every account of a politician is 99,9999% gonna be a bot and just ban it instantly.

The only correct solution is META having human support staff on call for such situations which i thought they did in Dublin, at least last time I checked ~8 or so years ago.

At this point, meta could buy the EU.

Everything is absolutely for sale, if we did things The American Way but luckily we aren't, so good luck buying it :)

Meta on Facebook: posts about contraception, HIV or family planning will get you banned. Posting photos of drowned migrants on Italian beaches with hateful messages? That’s cool, bro free speech.

That's about right. Instagram is the worst.

"We won't remove this because it doesn't violate our content policy - just block the user if you don't like it".

Yeah just seen someone's head cut off with a machete. Not even joking. That'll stay with me forever.

There's more and worse. A friend has been making a point of sending me Instagram Reels of OnlyFans performers showing their genitals briefly without getting banned or without the reels being removed. Some of those stay up for months.

Don't judge, the friend is interested in the way they find interesting solutions to bypass censorship, more than the content. Or so he says. And LOL, no, I'm not "the friend".

This to say, that they are absolutely not in control of their platforms, except for heavily political content, and speech-related content. Flash a vulva quickly enough by using smart lighting, and they won't catch it. I guess we'll still have that in our dystopian future.

Zuckerberg social medias are but a cancer to society. That has become fundamentally clear. They need to be so heavily regulated that they become unrecognizable, or they should be destroyed with all means possible (legally, of course).

This is actually true? Facebook bans users who talk about contraception and HIV?

I don't use Facebook so no idea if this is true or not personally, but ChatGPT seems to think this isn't true and that if it does happen it's probably a mistake?

I don't know if the regulations are reasonable (often there is government overreach) but I don't mind if they were just banned outright.

I don't think Meta crates economic civic value.

The time spent away from Meta would be better used for almost any other purpose.

Feels 'authoritarian' but the same reason FB/IN is bad for teens is the same reason it's bad for regular people.

I mean, obviously we can't go around banning companies, but still ... it would be good.

When you have a business and you're trying to reach people, social media works surprisingly well, as long as you don't get banned for arbitrary reasons.

For better or worse, several economies would currently come to a screeching halt if WhatsApp were to be banned.

Normally I'd go - more fines against Meta are great. So, no problem with that.

But ...

hate speech in the EU is "incitement to violence or hatred based on race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin"[0].

You should be able to see criticism is fine, while calling people "stupid monkeys" is not.

But this isn't even about the EU's definition: Facebook & co have their own definition of hate speech, and they are not holding it up.

[0] https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/ju...

If you think calling black footballers monkeys isn't hate speech, there is no explaining anything to you about this topic.

Meanwhile if you're even slightly dickish to one of these people you will get immediately warned or shadowbanned. Meanwhile the post, get notified 9 months later that they reviewed it and found it doesn't violate their terms of service.

I guess Zucki, Meta and SV folks (proofed on HN itself) just drunk too much "EU is declining because of regulation" and it will end like Lightning and Apple.

Stupid how? There's nothing regulation-worthy about banning users who aren't in some legally binding contract that'd make the action a breach of terms.

The US is moving rapidly away from EU towards Asia. EU acts like they are driving this.

I would be interested to see how many EU government jobs the US tech fines are supporting. Maybe Meta or Google is indirectly the largest employer in Brussels?

There are no fines at all in this story.

There are no fines, this is about having recourse when big tech randomly bans you. Which you will remember, is a very common outcry on this very page.

This is just an uninformed EU rant.

except you dont' get a "human" when you buy "premium support", you get a chatbot with elevated access. source: ex-colleague who use to work at CSE team for IG and Whatsapp.

> It was then banned automatically for impersonation.

The only correct solution is META having human support staff on call for such situations which i thought they did in Dublin, at least last time I checked ~8 or so years ago.

Stupid how? There's nothing regulation-worthy about banning users who aren't in some legally binding contract that'd make the action a breach of terms.

You can't use Meta without agreeing to "some legally binding contract."

The US is moving rapidly away from EU towards Asia. EU acts like they are driving this.

This might feel like a reasonable take in isolation, but if you take it in context of today's society, and how everything actually works, it's not reasonable or realistic. Nor is it empathetic in any way.

These social media companies have created an environment where they are the dominant, near-exclusive, medium for communication in our digital age. If you are running a consumer-facing business in 2026 you *must* be on these platforms.

Given that these companies have actively pursued these positions they now hold, do you not feel they have a responsibility to be fair, reliable and trustworthy? That they have some obligation to their users, paying or not. They are choosing to offer the service for free, and they do make money on you regardless.

Losing your business accounts on Meta or Tiktok or Youtube can have catastrophic real-world consequences. And mistakes happen all the time, so you can't realistically assume every ban or cancellation is justified or correct.

> Having an account on a company's platform is a privilege, not a right.

Businesses can lose a lot traffic by not being present on Facebook and Instagram, so being unjustifiably banned is doing measurable financial harm in many cases.

Even as an individual it can be a huge pain to not have Facebook. The local individual sales market (e.g. classified ads) is dominated by Facebook Marketplace now, for example, and not having access to that market makes it difficult to sell things.

Meta has a responsibility to the community because of their position as the de facto platform for many activities. They've even intentionally positioned themselves to dominate. Having laws requiring them to act responsibly is totally justifiable.

"Whims" skew discriminatory.

Enough of the real world interfaces with online services that arbitrary bans cause actual damages, more harm than banning an annoying player from your obscure MUD.

From what I understand nothing in the EU regulation prevents a company from arbitrarily banning people. You can read it in full here: https://www.eu-digital-services-act.com/Digital_Services_Act.... It basically just establishes how the dispute should be handled between the parties

Then there's no reason why a government shouldn't regulate these companies, and use sanctions of all kinds - including fines, and the potential for an outright ban - to enforce those regulations.

i would support this if local/state/provincial/federal governments were not allowed to post exclusively on social media. other companies should also not be allowed to use social media as their only method of customer support.

Then there should be a law that requires the platform to interoperate with independent clients. You can't have both. The social network is a common good. If you want to benefit from it, then you need to treat people fairly.

I hope they find them a billion dollars a day

They are not breaking EU law.

>Under EU law, online platforms should "engage in good faith" with the body, but its decision is not legally binding.

It's fine if you just want to see Facebook suffer but let's not pretend they are breaking the law.

You assume that the EU acts in a coherent manner.

I think that premise is wrong - there are many interest groups, and by luck/lobbying/reaching critical mass/... they manage to put one of their interests into a law.

EU has different things going on though. Some good regulation, some bad

I think the censorship framing is quite manipulative. It is removal of unlawful content.

Is removing CSAM censorship? What about snuff?

If no, then where do you draw the line? Why can't our democratically elected governments decide what is and isn't lawful? Why should foreign Big Capital be allowed to decide instead?

Restricting the distribution of any material on content-based criteria by persons other than sender or intended receiver is censorship.

Whether it is desirable censorship or not is generally a separate issue from whether or not it is censorship, unless, for example, you have previously adopted a rule that the particular actor committing the censorship shall not engage in censorship at all, in which case they are, of course, inherently the same question. (Where this gets hairy is when one likes to pretend that one has such a rule for a particular actor, but actually really would prefer that actor to censor certain things, which sometimes occurs with modern liberal democratic regimes, and especially frequently occurs with a particular North American one which has what superficially looks like a very strong restriction in that area in its Constitution.)

> Had a restaurant with a Facebook + Instagram page

But this here is already a prior problem - you depend on these US companies in the first place.

>The EU could easily make it free to have a homepage associated for no cost.

the benefit to the business is not that they have a homepage. its that facebook/instagram bring hundreds of thousands of eyes to the page that otherwise would not see it.

We had a website, that's besides the point. You want to be where people already are, which for American tourists, will be American social media. It's not a choice between "be on social media and survive, or don't", it's "reach the audience you're trying to reach or don't", not a matter of survival.

That won't change 20-30% of their customers using Facebook/Instagram to find them.

The only way I've seen around the impenetrable US social media network effects is to isolate your people either through restricting access or naturally occurring low bilingualism.

The western world speaks English online, so the latter is unlikely to happen and the former would be a final admission that our cultural values mean nothing in practice.

> But this here is already a prior problem - you depend on these US companies in the first place.

Not really? The upstream problem is getting customers, and the concrete problem is that these humongous American advertising agencies are too big to care about customer services for their smallest clients.

Switching to a EU administrated advertising agency is not obviously better, because that's another big organisation but with even less ties to the local level. The one upside is that a EU level organisation can be legally compelled to fix problems, but even then don't expect it to happen quickly.

Do people in the EU want to see their tax money used for that purpose rather than other far more pressing needs such as healthcare? I really doubt it.