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News.com.au
16-07-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
Dog video on Instagram costs Aussie business owner $50k
An Australian small business owner claims she lost about $50,000 after her Instagram accounts were suspended over an 'innocent' video of three dogs. Rochelle Marinato, managing director at Pilates World Australia, a retailer of high-quality fitness equipment, says she was notified of the suspension through an email from Instagram's parent company, Meta. It said her accounts had been suspended because the clip, posted on her personal profile, breached community guidelines related to 'child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity'. However, she claims the post was mistakenly flagged by an AI moderator, which believed the dogs in the clip were actually children. 'I was confused, but I wasn't overly worried. It seemed like such a silly mistake, and I assumed it would be sorted out straight away,' Ms Marinato tells As the video was shared on her personal profile, she had 'no idea' her business account would be affected. But the message told her it was, for being 'associated with an account that breached community guidelines'. It's understood that Meta uses a combination of people and technology to find and remove accounts that break its rules. In addition to using technology to proactively detect violating content, Meta also leverages it to identify signals of potentially suspicious behaviour, such as when people search for violating child safety terms. Different actions are taken depending on the strength and number of these signals, which may include account restrictions or complete removal. Although she was initially concerned about the suspension, Ms Marinato says she was hopeful the appeals process would be 'authentic and honourable,' and that once a human reviewed her case, the decision would be quickly overturned. However, due to the lengthy appeal process, Ms Marinato said her business suffered a serious financial blow. 'Instagram is a critical marketing platform for any small business, especially one in the pilates and wellness industry that relies heavily on social media for visibility and sales,' she explained. 'We missed out on several major opportunities that could have increased revenue, most notably an influencer with 1.2 million followers who tried to promote our products and made the comment that our business 'couldn't be found'.' From a reputation perspective, she described the situation as 'damaging,' as customers believed the business had closed or done something wrong to be removed from Instagram. She estimated the suspension caused her around $50,000 in losses, with her revenue dropping by around 75 per cent. 'It was extremely stressful, being the sole provider for my family. This sudden drop in income, combined with the feeling that resolving the issue was impossible, caused immense anxiety,' she said. A Meta spokesperson told 'We take action on accounts that violate our policies, and people can appeal if they think we've made a mistake'. Ms Marinato said she contacted Meta Support over '20 times' but only received generic and robotic responses. She also reached out to the Meta Oversight Board, an organisation that provides independent checks on Meta's content moderation. She then spoke to IT and marketing experts and even hired a lawyer to contact Meta, but she says none of this led to a genuine response or progress in overturning her suspension. After three weeks of trying to regain access to her account, she finally engaged a third-party service that, for a fee, was able to restore her business account. Now, she's calling on the platform to do better. 'The hardest part of this whole experience was that there was simply no course of action,' she shared. 'Meta has no contact number, no email address, no live chat, and most importantly, no human support. 'If I had just been able to speak to a human being, this would have been resolved immediately with little impact on my livelihood.'
Daily Mail
15-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Dog picture posted to Instagram costs an Australian woman $50,000
An Australian small business owner says she lost about $50,000 after Instagram suspended her accounts over what she describes as an innocent photo of three dogs. Rochelle Marinato, managing director at Pilates World Australiarecently received an email from Instagram's parent company Meta stating her accounts had been suspended because the image breached community guidelines relating to 'child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity.' The photo had been mistakenly flagged by an AI moderator, which confused the image of the dogs with those of children. She appealed the decision and sent 22 emails to Meta, but received no assistance from the global tech giant, which owns Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Messenger and WhatsApp. Ms Marinato told Daily Mail Australia the suspension had a serious financial impact on her business. 'When it first happened I thought it was just a silly mistake and we'll fix it and it might take an hour,' she said. 'We were in the middle of the end of financial year sales for the business so it was pretty horrendous timing. 'I appealed and pretty quickly I received notification from Meta that my accounts were permanently disabled with no further course of action available.' Left with few options, Ms Marinato said she was forced to take an unconventional route and pay a third party to get the accounts reinstated. 'I spent three weeks researching how to get my account back. In that time our revenue dropped by 75 per cent,' she said. 'For a small business like us, social media is critical. Everything just stopped when our accounts were suspended. 'In losing my account, all my Instagram advertising was gone. It had a really significant impact on the business because we rely so heavily on social media.' She claims the sudden disappearance from the platform had a direct cost to her bottom line. 'I did a basic comparison to last year, just so I could be sure of the figures, and it cost me about $50,000,' she said. But beyond the financial loss, Ms Marinato said she was outraged by the implication behind the platform's suspension notice. 'It's a horrible, disgusting allegation to have thrown your way and to be associated with. People will think we've done something wrong to lose our account,' she said. 'It's scary that AI has this power and also gets it this wrong. We could be on a slippery slope.' Despite losing $50,000, Ms Marinato said she was now only focusing on getting her business back to where it was before Meta's AI intervened. 'I don't think anyone's been successful in recoupling any loss and that would be an extra expense. I just need to keep working hard and hope this doesn't happen again,' she said. Ms Marinato claimed her story was just one of many and that the problem was widespread. She also said it was impossible to talk to a human at Meta to explain her situation. 'I couldn't get a human to look at it. Clearly any human that looks at this photo is going to know it's completely innocent,' she said.
