Facebook has reportedly “automatically disabled” a large number of user accounts, according to a news report from startup news website, BEAMSTART.
In the past few days, several thousand users have had their accounts disabled, affecting their livelihoods and ability to communicate with their friends and families online.
To most of the users’ surprise, many were sent the following email when attempting to log in to their accounts.
Your Facebook account has been disabled. This is because your account, or activity on it, doesn’t follow our Community Standards. If you think we disabled your account by mistake, we can take you through a few steps to request a review. You’ll need to complete these steps within 30 days to avoid your account being permanently disabled.
Upon filing an appeal to have their accounts reactivated, they were then faced with the following message, with no access to their accounts.
“We received your information. Thank you for sending your information. We have fewer people available to review information due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This means we may be unable to review your account. We apologise for any inconvenience.”
Affected users have also lamented that they were unable to receive any adequate support from Facebook, with many of their appeals falling onto deaf ears.
Since then, users have taken their disgruntlement to other social media platforms, starting a #facebookdisabledme campaign that has taken off on Twitter and Reddit, .