In threads, the topic “errors in thread moderation” is trending. Some users complain that their accounts are being deleted or restricted because they link to articles with controversial topics. Instagram and Threads boss Adam Mosseri responded directly to some complaints and said he was “looking into the matter.” And I'm one of many people whose account was deleted because they were supposedly a child – which I'm not.
Moderation is a persistent problem on social media, but it is based on social media posts and The edge Based on employees' own experiences, Meta currently bans and limits users to one hair-raising trigger. One of my colleagues was briefly locked out of her account this week after she joked that she “wanted to die” because of a heatwave.
Social media consultant Matt Navarra – who was informed that his Threads account was being demoted after he shared a story about how Tom Brady fell for a meta-AI hoax – received a response to his public complaint from Mosseri. “I’ll take a look at this…” Mosseri said. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the issues.
And then there is my Instagram account. On Tuesday, I loaded Instagram and learned that Meta had deactivated my account. The alleged reason was that I was under 13, the minimum age to join the site. I had 30 days to appeal before the account was permanently suspended and I was asked to upload a copy of my state ID. I decided to trust Meta's promise that it would be “securely stored and deleted within 30 days.” But after checking, Meta insisted that I was still a minor.
“Our technology has detected that your account or your activity on it does not comply with our rules. As a result, a member of our team took action,” Meta’s moderation message told me. The call continued – without any ifs or buts. All the posts and connections I've made since college through an account I had before Facebook bought Instagram are gone, and I feel a little dead inside.
Meta allowed me to request to download my data before it was deleted, but then the link provided failed to load.
I'm not sure why my ID wasn't enough to verify my age, and I'm not sure if the age-based bans are related to the other seemingly restrictive moderation calls like Crackergate. However, in some cases this moderation results in the Services being significantly less useful. Gaming deal poster Wario64, for example, has frequently posted on threads that flag posts as spam or possibly automated. After encountering the issue again in Prime Day posts this week, he said he was done posting them for now – and future coverage posts of live gaming events in threads were “probably out of the question.”