Major Property Investor Group Suspended From Facebook Without Explanation
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – Property Investor Chat Group NZ, one of New Zealand’s largest online communities for property investors with 73,000 members, was suspended from Facebook last week with administrators reporting they received no prior warning.
administrators say the group maintained strict content moderation,with approval required for all posts and a system for members to report suspicious activity. “We are quite strict in regulating content to stay on topic,” said Nick gentle, one of the group’s administrators. ”Avoid fights. Post approval to remove anything fishy, and members report anyone sharing dodgy links and those profiles get blocked, so I’ve no idea what rule we broke.”
Gentle expressed frustration with Facebook’s lack of transparency, stating, “Sometimes Facebook will say ‘we have removed content that went against our community guidelines’ but you can never click in to see what it was to adjust your settings.” He added that they are struggling to contact facebook support to understand the reason for the suspension and face the possibility of rebuilding the group from scratch.
Group founder Graeme Fowler believes the decision was made by artificial intelligence (AI).
University of Auckland professor of commercial law, Alex Sims, confirmed that such suspensions are common. “Lots of people and groups get removed from Facebook with no warning. One reason can be Meta’s use of AI, with no human in the loop reviewing the decision. [It] was a real issue earlier in the year, and the issue may still be occurring. There is an appeal process which should be initiated ASAP.”
Sims suggested exploring option platforms with stronger privacy protections, acknowledging the potential challenges of migrating a large user base. “The issue is that those other platforms are frequently enough not as user-friendly as Facebook and not so familiar for the group’s members, so might potentially be a steep learning curve for the admins and group members.”
the suspension is the latest in a series of reported incidents of unexplained account and group removals on Facebook. RNZ has previously reported on numerous cases of New Zealanders having their social media accounts suspended without clear justification, and a petition advocating for affected users garnered tens of thousands of signatures globally, citing Meta’s ”broken AI enforcement systems.”
Facebook has been contacted for comment.
