Business Owner Claims $2000 Daily Loss After Facebook & Instagram Account Ban

A Wellington man says his businesses lost up to $2000 a day after their Instagram and Facebook accounts were banned mistakenly. Alex Hoang is the general manager for two businesses in the capital, Pho Viet Street Food and Velvet Nail Room. On 14 January he was notified that the Instagram and Facebook accounts were locked due to sexual content on his page which he completely rejected. Hoang immediately appealed which resulted in Meta services saying he was permanently banned. He told RNZ after he was not getting anywhere with the normal process of escalating these issues, he contacted an email address that was not public after seeing an influencer use it who had similar problems. Following that the ban was reversed on Saturday. Hoang said his businesses relied social media a lot. "Social media is really important for those businesses as it is a channel for us to communicate with customers." He estimated the two businesses were losing between $1000-$2000 per day. "A lot of customers very luckily they contacted me, they thought something was wrong with me [or] something was wrong with the business, which is really, really frustrating." Hoang was concerned he'd have to wait months for the issue to be resolved and noted he also contacted a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment mailbox that was set up for people in similar situations. Small Business and Manufacturing Minister Chris Penk told RNZ around 100 requests had been received through the dedicated inbox since the beginning of October. "The consistent concern raised by these businesses is the disruption caused by losing access to their accounts. For many small businesses, social media platforms are a primary channel for communicating with customers and promoting their products and services." Penk said MBIE continued to engage constructively with Meta and was passing on emails received directly for the company to review in cases where small businesses alleged their accounts may have been incorrectly suspended. A Meta spokesperson told RNZ it took action on accounts that violated their policies, and people could appeal to the social media company if they thought it made a mistake.