Latest news with #PilatesWorld
Sky News AU
7 days ago
- Business
- Sky News AU
Aussie business owner speaks on how Meta's wrongful ban crippled her brand
A Gold Coast business owner has revealed Meta's Artificial Intelligence falsely accused her of child exploitation over a dog video, crippling the brand in the process. The error shut down the account of Pilates World, wiping out tens of thousands of dollars in revenue Pilates World Founder Rochelle Marinato spoke on the damage the ban did to her business.
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'.
