The notification startled Camille Hanson awake one night this March. Her Facebook and Instagram accounts, where she had nearly one million followers running a business with her husband teaching English to nonnative speakers, had been flagged for deletion. Meta said she had violated the community guidelines for fraud and deception.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just an English teacher,\u201d Ms. Hanson, 40, remembered thinking. She was flummoxed by the fraud and deception claims. \u201cWhat am I doing wrong?\u201d she wondered.<\/p>\n
The notice said she could appeal, so she clicked the button to begin the process. A week later, she got another notification: Her appeal was denied.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll your information will be permanently deleted,\u201d Meta\u2019s response read. \u201cYou cannot request another review of this decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was like having \u201can actual physical business, and somebody just shuts down your office or your storefront,\u201d Ms. Hanson\u2019s husband, Calvin, 42, said in an interview from their home in Portugal.<\/p>\n
What happened to the Hansons was a case of artificial intelligence gone wrong<\/a>. The technology is increasingly responsible for deciding which accounts broke Meta\u2019s content rules while also managing the appeals for those decisions. Adding to people\u2019s distress, it is often difficult for users like the Hansons to reach anybody at the company to figure out what to do.<\/p>\n In March, Meta announced plans to hand more power to A.I. bots to decide which accounts to ban or harmful images to remove. Months later, the company laid off thousands of employees<\/a>, including those who did those jobs.<\/p>\n Users have organized online, with more than 60,000 recently signing a petition asking Meta to provide more information about account bans and to let humans review appeals. Several communities on Reddit and elsewhere have been bombarded with complaints from Meta users about the company\u2019s A.I.<\/p>\n Daniel Roberts, a Meta spokesman, disputed that A.I. was worse at handling accounts than humans, and said the company\u2019s new A.I. moderation tools make 13 percent fewer mistakes than human employees and find 10 percent more violations. Of the five accounts The New York Times flagged to Meta, all were banned by the company\u2019s old A.I. moderation tools, Mr. Roberts said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re committed to making fewer enforcement mistakes and helping individuals protect their accounts \u2014 and A.I. is delivering on both,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Meta has grappled with several instances of A.I. going awry. In May, hackers exploited its A.I. customer service chatbot to attack 34,000 Instagram accounts<\/a>, including a former White House account of Barack Obama\u2019s. That same month, employees revolted over a program that tracked their keyboard movements<\/a> to train A.I., leading Meta to pause the effort.<\/p>\n Last week, 26 former Meta employees said in a lawsuit that the company had laid them off using an A.I. algorithm that targeted them for having disabilities. A Meta spokesman said that \u201cworkforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not A.I.\u201d<\/p>\n People Over Platforms, a user advocacy group that sells account recovery services, created the online petition this year to compel Meta to change its account moderation policies. Meta had accused many of the signers of sharing child exploitation material \u2014 a charge that users said added insult to injury \u2014 and then banned them.<\/p>\n