Latest news with #RochelleMarinato
Sky News AU
6 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.
News.com.au
7 days ago
- 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.'
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'.
