‘A big ball of shock,’ say business owners after Instagram suspensions

Saskatoon photographer Paige Bell says she stands to lose $3,000 in business this month due to her Instagram being suspended.

Last weekend, Chase Flahr received an email from Meta advising him that his personal Instagram account had been suspended for activity that does not follow the company’s community standards on abuse.

“It’s just a big ball of shock,” he said.

“If anyone’s ever followed my Instagram page, they know none of my content has anything to do with abusive anything.”

Flahr used his personal Instagram account for more than just sharing photos of him and his wife. For the last 12 years, he’s relied on it as a marketing tool for his businesses.

As owner of ProElite Athletics, he’d post videos and photos of the athletes he trains for promotional content.

In a slow month, he says the account would garner up to 160,000 page views. Flahr estimates marketing on Instagram contributed to about 75 per cent of his annual income.

“It’s literally the centre, the nucleus of the marketing for my companies,” he said.

Flahr was given 180 days to appeal the suspension. But when he did, he said his appeal was denied and the company permanently deleted his account.

Tech analyst Ritesh Kotak says this has been “a global problem” for personal and business accounts that’s only getting worse as more content is posted.

Meta uses an AI content monitoring system that analyzes text, audio and video to determine if a post or an account violates the company’s community standards, according to Kotak. If AI determines there is a potential violation, the system will flag the content for removal or for a human to review it, Kotak explained.

“AI content moderation is not perfect,” he said.

False positives happen frequently, according to Kotak, resulting in personal and business accounts being wrongfully flagged for content that violates community standards.

Considering the large number of posts made on Meta platforms, Kotak says it is important to leverage AI. But he said it’s just as important for the company to have a timely, transparent appeal process, “which currently does not exist.”

“If the account gets flagged or shut down, there is no 1-800 number that you can call as a business,” he said.

CTV News reached out to Meta for comment, but has yet to hear back.

Saskatoon photographer Paige Bell had her business Instagram account suspended in June, along with all her linked Meta accounts, including her personal and professional Facebook page and her Threads account.

She posted photography from weddings, graduations and lifestyle shoots, nothing that she said should have been flagged for violating Instagram’s community standards.

“The email said that I was suspended for nudity and child sexual exploitation, which I knew instantly was a complete lie. It wasn’t true and I knew it had to be a glitch,” she said.

When Bell appealed the suspension, she received an email that said she’d hear back in approximately one day. It’s been two and half months and she hasn’t heard anything, she said.

“It’s so frustrating and it’s impossible to reach anyone at Meta,” she said.

Similar to Flahr, Bell’s Instagram has been her primary marketing tool and photography portfolio for the last ten years. She had close to 6,000 followers and received 320,000 page visits each month.

“I rely on it for my income and my clientele, and even the small things like messaging clients and helping them pick their photo location,” Bell said.

Bell’s website was linked to her Instagram account. Since the suspension, she said site views have dropped nearly 50 per cent.

She estimates her business, Distantides Photography, is down by about $3,000 in bookings this month compared to last September. She’s concerned about the winter when business is already typically slower than the rest of the year.

“I’m worried about paying my rent. I’m worried about my annual income, especially because I don’t have anything at the moment that I can just fall back on because photography is my full-time job,” she said.

Bell and Flahr have created new accounts since their suspensions. Both had to use different names or emails so the new accounts wouldn’t be associated with the suspended ones.

Bell said she’s struggling to convince old followers that her new account isn’t a scam. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to build back her following.

Flahr is optimistic he can rebuild his following, but as a business owner, he regrets putting all his eggs in one basket.

“We lost a lot of photos, a lot of conversations, things that we’ll never get back,” Flahr said.