Facebook Will Soon Have Customer-Service Team for Content Complaints

Meta Platforms Inc., Facebook’s parent firm, is establishing a customer-service branch to assist users of its social networks who have had content or accounts terminated abruptly. The endeavor is still in its early stages, but it has gained importance as a result of criticism from the Oversight Board, an independent group established by the firm in 2020 to evaluate some of its judgments on doubtful or problematic material. The board has received over a million user appeals, many of which are linked to account assistance.

Support Team for Content Review

Meta, which has over 3 billion worldwide users across social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, is known for providing bad customer support. The problem has become worse as the corporation relies more heavily on artificial intelligence to make content moderation judgments, which occasionally results in the automatic termination of users’ accounts or postings with no explanation.

Regular users and small company marketers alike often complain about the lack of redress for a locked, suspended, or hacked account. For example, an account about Samsung smart switch is suspended for unknown reasons, the admin has to go through hoops to regain access. The organization provides automatic methods to attempt to restore an account, but getting in touch with someone who works at Meta is challenging. Instead, users may sometimes message staff or journalists directly, asking for assistance.

Improving customer service was not a specific suggestion, but the Oversight Board has helped to shed light on the problem as part of its overall comments to Meta. According to a quarterly report provided by the firm on Thursday, Meta has executed or examined 73% of the formal recommendations made by the board.

The research also revealed fresh information concerning Meta’s newsworthiness exemption. The business has historically permitted certain postings with journalistic value, such as those from foreign leaders, to stay on the site even if they violate the rules — a policy that Twitter Inc. also maintains — but has never disclosed how often that policy is applied.

Meta said that it used the newsworthiness exception 68 times in the year ending June 30, with 13 of those occasions being “granted for material uploaded by politicians.” The complete list of postings that gained the exception was not included in Meta, but a representative indicated that none of the 13 political exemptions came from US officials.

While not a part of Meta, the Oversight Board is conceptualized and sponsored by the firm. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg desired an external organization with power to review Meta’s work and, if necessary, overturn its judgments.

Meta also released a quarterly report on its content enforcement decisions on Thursday. According to Monika Bickert, Meta’s vice president of content policy, the firm banned roughly 500 profiles, pages, and groups associated to the far-right extremist organization the Proud Boys last quarter. Meta banned the group in 2018, yet material has continued to appear; Bickert claims Meta has purged about 750 assets associated with the organization in the last year.

We hope the creation of the new support team will aid users rather than be just another ill-attempt by Meta in solving issues.