Latest news with #Marinato
Economic Times
15-07-2025
- Business
- Economic Times
How a three-second Instagram clip featuring dogs sparked trouble for a business owner
Synopsis Rochelle Marinato, an Australian business owner, faced account suspension on Instagram. Meta flagged her personal and business accounts for violating community guidelines related to child exploitation. Despite multiple appeals, her business account was permanently disabled, leading to a significant revenue drop until Meta restored it after an investigation. Marinato said that she received an email to her business account where she promotes her products. TIL Creatives An AI moderator seemed to have detected an issue with the image and mistaken it for an image of children.. An adorable video featuring three dogs looking outside a window invited trouble for an Australian business owner from Meta. The business owner in question here is Rochelle Marinato, who owns a Pilates equipment supplier. She posted the video on her personal Instagram account and said she received an email from the social media giant that her account had been suspended for "breaching community guidelines around child sexual exploitation, abuse, and nudity."The matter surfaced when an AI moderator seemed to have detected an issue with the image and mistaken it for an image of children. Speaking to Nine's 2GB radio, Marinato said that she received an email to her business account where she promotes her products. She was advised that account had been suspended as further stated that she was told it was associated with an account that breached community guidelines. She appealed the decision multiple times and sent more than 22 emails to Meta, but she had no help. "I had no idea that by putting up this little three-second video of the dogs," she said."Even when I received the original email from Meta saying my account was suspended, I thought, 'This will be fine; I'll get it back shortly.' But then I received the email about my business account, and I was a little more worried, but it does give you an option to appeal at first, so I appealed. Immediately, my appeal was also assessed by AI, and it was denied, so from then on, my business account was permanently disabled," she further stated. A Meta spokesperson said Marinato's case was investigated by the company and restored following an appeal. "We take action on accounts that violate our policies, and people can appeal if they think we've made a mistake," the spokesperson said, as quoted by 9News. Prior to the restoration of her account, Marinato said she went through the process of paying a third party. "This is someone my kids actually found on TikTok, and their account doesn't exist anymore," she said. "This seems to be what they business owner has been researching for the past three weeks how to recover her account. "The problem is so widespread, and I'd heard of people paying to get their accounts back." "Our revenue dropped by 75 percent," she said."With losing that account, all of my Instagram advertising was gone as well, because I advertise quite heavily on Meta. It had a really significant impact on the business because we rely so heavily on social media, especially in the fitness space. We lost everything," she continued.
Time of India
15-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
How a three-second Instagram clip featuring dogs sparked trouble for a business owner
An adorable video featuring three dogs looking outside a window invited trouble for an Australian business owner from Meta . The business owner in question here is Rochelle Marinato, who owns a Pilates equipment supplier. She posted the video on her personal Instagram account and said she received an email from the social media giant that her account had been suspended for "breaching community guidelines around child sexual exploitation, abuse, and nudity." The matter surfaced when an AI moderator seemed to have detected an issue with the image and mistaken it for an image of children. Speaking to Nine's 2GB radio, Marinato said that she received an email to her business account where she promotes her products. She was advised that account had been suspended as well. She further stated that she was told it was associated with an account that breached community guidelines. She appealed the decision multiple times and sent more than 22 emails to Meta, but she had no help. "I had no idea that by putting up this little three-second video of the dogs," she said. "Even when I received the original email from Meta saying my account was suspended, I thought, 'This will be fine; I'll get it back shortly.' But then I received the email about my business account, and I was a little more worried, but it does give you an option to appeal at first, so I appealed. Immediately, my appeal was also assessed by AI, and it was denied, so from then on, my business account was permanently disabled," she further stated. Meta Responds Live Events A Meta spokesperson said Marinato's case was investigated by the company and restored following an appeal. "We take action on accounts that violate our policies, and people can appeal if they think we've made a mistake," the spokesperson said, as quoted by 9News. How was Marinato's account restored Prior to the restoration of her account, Marinato said she went through the process of paying a third party. "This is someone my kids actually found on TikTok, and their account doesn't exist anymore," she said. "This seems to be what they do. The business owner has been researching for the past three weeks how to recover her account. "The problem is so widespread, and I'd heard of people paying to get their accounts back." "Our revenue dropped by 75 percent," she said. "With losing that account, all of my Instagram advertising was gone as well, because I advertise quite heavily on Meta. It had a really significant impact on the business because we rely so heavily on social media, especially in the fitness space. We lost everything," she continued. Economic Times WhatsApp channel )
Sky News AU
15-07-2025
- Business
- Sky News AU
Meta falsely accuses Gold Coast business owner of child exploitation and suspends her accounts after she posted a video of her dogs
A Gold Coast business owner has been wrongfully banned by Meta's Artificial Intelligence (AI) and falsely accused of child exploitation over an innocent dog video posted online. Rochelle Marinato, the founder of Pilates World, has spent 12 years building her brand which sells Pilates reformers and equipment. But the single mother of four's business quickly crippled after she posted a video of three dogs looking out of a window on her personal account on June 28. Ms Marinato received an email from Instagram which stated the post breached community standards on 'Child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity'. Her account was suspended, as was Pilates World's business account, due to its association. 'I received an email from Meta letting me know my account had been suspended … There were no humans in the video,' she said. Ms Marinato appealed the suspension, but it was assessed by Meta AI and denied before both were permanently disabled. Pilates World vanished from Instagram's search, the account couldn't be tagged or found by customers and sales dropped by 75 per cent. 'Honestly, we rely so heavily on social media. It's such a critical form of marketing for small business, for visibility and brand recognition and sales,' she said. Ms Marinato said she emailed Meta 22 times and requested a human reassess the situation but only received generic responses. Her solicitor also sent a letter to Meta's head office in California and Sydney but is yet to receive a response. As a last resort, the business owner turned to a third party to recover the accounts. 'We did pay them, and I thought it was probably a scam, but at that point, I was so desperate, business was being impacted so significantly that I was willing to take the risk, and it worked, and we got our accounts back,' Ms Marinato said. While the accounts have been restored, Ms Marinato estimates the outage has cost her $50,000 and the brand's reputation has been bruised. 'It's really heavy, actually, to think that is something that's going to be associated with my business name and with my digital footprint. It's really, really scary, and all because of a mistake by AI', 'So it's impossible to know what meta will find a breach and what it won't, because that video was of three dogs. There was no humans in the video. So it's almost impossible to avoid in the future,' she said. Ms Marinato is among thousands of impacted users online by Meta's tech failure. A petition with more than 30,000 signatures is calling on the social media company to stop wrongful account bans and offer human support. In a statement to Sky News, A Meta spokesperson said, 'We're always working to improve the enforcement of all our policies to help keep our community safe,' 'We haven't seen evidence of a significant increase in incorrect enforcement'.
