ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Two Orlando LGBTQIA+ nightclub owners say Instagram disabled their business accounts after flagging them for \u201chuman exploitation,\u201d leaving them without a key way to promote events and reach customers.<\/p>\n
Brandon Llewellyn, co-owner of Savoy, said the nightclub received a message from Meta, Instagram\u2019s parent company, two days after Orlando Pride. <\/p>\n
The message said two of Savoy\u2019s Instagram accounts had been disabled.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say it\u2019s a human exploitation, basically accusing us of human trafficking, which obviously is not happening here,\u201d Llewellyn said.<\/p>\n
According to Llewellyn, Savoy still has not been told which post triggered the suspension. Mike Vacirca, co-owner of LGBTQIA+ nightclub Anthem, said his business received a similar message from Instagram.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got a notification from Instagram that said your account has been suspended and you could appeal,\u201d Vacirca said. \u201cWe appealed immediately, and then three days later we got a permanent ban for our account.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both owners said their accounts were flagged for human exploitation and said they do not believe a person reviewed their appeals before the bans were upheld.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I understand that they\u2019re operating at scale, but if it\u2019s a severe enough consequence and it\u2019s a severe enough reason, there should be humans doing some kind of review in this process,\u201d Vacirca said.<\/p>\n
Llewellyn said Savoy has also struggled to reach someone at Meta.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019re going over a week now, and we still haven\u2019t had an actual conversation with a human being from Meta trying to resolve the issue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While reporting the story, News 6 found other LGBTQIA+ nightclubs in places including Los Angeles and Texas had also reported Instagram account suspensions or disabled accounts.<\/p>\n
Anthem was eventually able to get its account back, Vacirca said, but not before the business created a backup account to reconnect with customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were able to get people onto the backup account and reconnect with some of our community,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we went from 12,500 people down to 1,000 people. It\u2019s a huge hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Savoy, Llewellyn said the business has started a third Instagram account because this is not the first time it has had issues with account access. The loss of Instagram has made it harder for the club to promote events.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not able to let people know about our events for the week or for the weekend or anything,\u201d Llewellyn said. \u201cAnd normally we would be paying them to advertise that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
News 6 first emailed Meta on Wednesday and followed up Thursday asking what triggered the suspensions and whether a human reviewed the appeals. This story will be updated if Meta responds.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Two Orlando LGBTQIA+ nightclub owners say Instagram disabled their business accounts after flagging them for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1432,1335,139,141,140],"class_list":["post-441530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-lgbtq","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}