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Just weeks after Facebook changed its name to “Meta,” a young user who owns the @metaverse Instagram account suddenly found herself blocked. A message notified Thea-Mai Baumann that she had been suspended for spoofing, although she had never impersonated someone else.
After several days, your account was returned to you after The New York The Times wrote an article about the ordeal, but Meta never offered an explanation of how the mistake was made.
Although what happened to him was unusual, there is one aspect of Baumann’s story that is more common: People who have their social media accounts unfairly suspended often have little or no recourse to get them back (at least, not without media attention).
Now that group of unfortunate users may have something to fight back with. The “robot lawyers” company DoNotPay, which offers automated legal services, has a new offering: get social media accounts unblocked.
The new service, which is included in DoNotPay’s $ 36 monthly subscription, offers users an alternative to emailing companies’ help center bots or submitting resources that may never receive a response. Instead, DoNotPay asks users for information about what happened to them, and sends a letter to the legal department of the appropriate company on their behalf.
“These platforms prioritize legal cases,” explains DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder. “When you only write to customer service, they don’t really take it seriously.” Legal departments, on the other hand, are much more likely to respond.
On appeal, the company also tries to “match” the appeal with a “legal reason why they can’t ban you,” using applicable state and federal laws. The letter also includes a deadline for the company to respond. He says that so far PayPal and Instagram have been the most requested services for this “robotic” legal service. But the service will also work with other platforms, such as Twitter, Snapchat, Uber, Tinder, YouTube, Twitch, and other networks.
Browder notes that the service is not intended for people who have been banned from a platform for legitimate reasons, such as violation of terms of service. Even for those who were wrongly suspended, he estimates that the chances of recovering an account as a result of this process are around 20%.
But even if the appeal is ultimately unsuccessful, Browder says there are other benefits to the process. On the one hand, companies are obliged to hand over user data regardless of whether their account was suspended. So even if it is not possible, for example, to regain access to the Instagram account, DoNotPay can guarantee that the company delivers the account data.
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