Meta’s suspension of social media accounts is taking a toll on Kiwis, as many lose contact with friends and family, and fear they may never get their social lives back.
Meanwhile, experts say there is significant power imbalance between social media platforms and users, but that New Zealanders can take legal action.
An Auckland mother of three, whom RNZ has named Amy to protect her children’s privacy, has lost years of memories after her Facebook and Instagram accounts were shut down by Meta.
“I’ve posted everyday normal content that any normal person would see as normal content of a mum, who is proud of her kids, who likes to cook, who likes to get out and about in her community,” she said.
“Nothing inappropriate, everything is completely safe, fun and friendly content.”
What’s more, she’s been traumatised by Meta’s wrongful accusation that her account breached its community standards on child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity.
As she spoke, she was in tears.
“That, actually, just was quite horrific to be accused of that. That’s not true.
“All my connection to my friends and family have gone – I was pretty devastated. I felt sick, physically sick.”
Simran Wadhawan was another of many Kiwis who had their digital life upended by Meta.
“Memories just vanished from when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, when I first met my partner, when I just graduated – all just gone,” she said. “Images and chats with people that passed away, which I can’t access anymore.”
Amy and Simran appealed, but months of no action from Meta followed.
After jumping through hoops, as well as paying Meta $30 a month to get help from an actual human, Simran was left emotionally drained and still without her account back.
“Every time you talk to an agent, you have to tell them from scratch what happened, and their answer is pretty much, ‘We can’t help you’. There’s been multiple times that, while I was chatting with them, they end the conversation and the chat is gone.
“It’s like they are driving me in circles without any update.”
On top of the lonely months-long wait, Amy also lost the parental supervision of her teenage daughter’s account. Simran, who works in marketing, was up for an award, but had to ask judges to ignore her missing social-media profiles.
Amy and Simran’s experiences are far from unique, as nearly 43,000 people have signed an online petition calling for action against Meta for disabling their accounts.
After many weeks without action from Meta, RNZ made an enquiry, and within hours, Simran and Amy’s accounts were re-instated.
University of Auckland Business School senior lecturer Benjamin Liu said large companies often acted quickly after media intervention, because they feared negative publicity, internal scrutiny and regulator attention.
Dozens of others contacted RNZ after earlier stories and we sent 18 accounts to Meta.
Half of them reported receiving their accounts back hours after RNZ’s enquiry. In total, 15 accounts were re-instated by the time of this story, including some that were suspended as far back as March and previously upheld on appeal.
A Meta spokesperson said the company acted on policy breaches and offered an appeal process, but did not answer questions on how long appeals take or address the distress caused.
Data from Meta’s report shows, while the overall percentage of appeal on enforcement actions has declined since 2024, appeals against enforcement for child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity rose to 9.91% in the last quarter, up from 4.38% a year earlier. The proportion of restored content also jumped from 1.41% to 13.66%.
Similar trends were reported for enforcement on adult nudity, dangerous organisations and regulated goods, but Meta warned that appeal and restoration figures don’t always match up by quarter, as some appeals are decided later.
What else can you do if your accounts are suspended?
Commercial law specialist Benjamin Liu said Kiwis had three legal avenues big companies like Meta.
Breach of Contract
Liu said Meta potentially breached the contract, if the account suspension was wrong.
A New Zealand consumer can sue the company for breach of contract in a New Zealand court, but Liu said definition of consumer could be challenging.
He said a free-platform user may be treated as a consumer, but a business who bought advertisements from Meta may not.
If the user was not seen as a consumer, under Meta’s Terms of Service, all other disputes would have to be resolved in a US court and California law applies.
Consumer Guarantees Act
Under the act, service must be delivered with reasonable care and skill.
Liu said wrongful suspensions may breach this standard, but proving losses could be difficult.
He said the court and tribunal process could be time-consuming, and he recommended starting with a strongly worded letter to Meta, outlining the breach and requesting immediate action.
“At least in that case, probably Meta will pay more attention to this issue, rather than ignoring customers emails or messages.”
Fair Trading Act
Liu said any user could take a case to the Commerce Commission, if Meta breached the Fair Trading Act.
“There is a chance, if a lot of users all make a complaint to the Commerce Commission, the commission may look into this matter, and see whether there has been any misleading conduct or representation.”
Liu said wrongful suspensions alone may not qualify, but Meta-verified subscribers promised human support could argue they were misled.
“Meta has made a mistake by wrongly suspending user’s accounts, but there’s no misleading representation.”
The power imbalance
Researcher Dr Rachel Faleatua from Victoria University said there was a significant power imbalance between platforms and users.
“We don’t get to have much of a say over how our data is getting used or taken,” she said. “We also don’t have much power over what they decide to do with our accounts.
“You could say the platform wouldn’t exist without users, which is correct. The chance of having enough users on there resist the platform, and come off the platform and move to another one is probably highly unlikely.”
She said ordinary users often invested a “tremendous amount” of labour into their social media, so having their digital life suddenly taken way could be very difficult.
“There’s the physical labour in terms of taking an image, editing it and uploading it, but there’s also the emotional labour that goes on, with sharing your life online and engaging with other people.”
She called for Meta to be accountable for the emotional distress it had caused its users and to be more transparent over how it worked.
“I’d love to see Meta really taking seriously the consumers and users that are on the platform, even though they are not influencers, but it’s generally the ordinary users who are keeping the platform running, as successful as they are.”
