Insane.
I don't think Meta and Google should be allowed to ban people without anyway for innocent users to recover the account or to download their own data after a permanent ban.
The only way I would ever see this getting fixed would be for them to abandon the ad-supported business model and actually charge ordinary users for their services. Whether you like it or not, "you get what you pay for" is a thing. If you are getting a service for free, you actually have no right to any kind of support. You just have to take whatever you get. Yes, it sucks, but unfortunately the only way to make sure you aren't a victim is to not trust anything you care about to these services. Which is why I don't.
However, it's still human on the other end. They know they ban a ton of users erroneously. They should have an appeals process for this. For example, maybe allow banned users to pay $1.99 to get a human review. Or provide an actual appeals process or invest in better spam detection.
In my case, it was obvious that it was a mistake. I used NordVPN, a very popular VPN, to browse Instagram.com on my laptop while logged in. Instant ban.
At the very least, banned users should be able to export their data. I had a ton of old contacts on my IG follower/following list that I lost. Impossible to get back.
If you have a problem with Big Social banning your free account, you have a problem not with Meta but with this business model being legal. Offering free “service” to collect and retain ad viewer eyeballs distorts the way market is supposed to work, because it’s impossible to compete with free and customers are locked in.
The only way out of this ever-deepening quagmire is to forbid this business model; all users should be paying customers, so the company is accountable to them, they can vote with their wallet, and the market can do its job properly.
Then why are you saying they should do something that, if you're not business illiterate, you know they can't do at scale?
> They know they ban a ton of users erroneously.
Yes. And they also know...
> They should have an appeals process for this.
...that anything like this that involves humans will not scale. That's why they don't do it: because they can't and still operate at scale.
> banned users should be able to export their data.
Which, again, they cannot support at scale.
Again, the only way this could ever be fixed would be for Meta and Google (and others) to abandon the ad-supported business model. But the only way that will ever happen is if they lose enough users to get their attention. In other words, stop feeding the monster. Complaining that the monster is bad and is doing bad things is pointless now.
> Impossible to get back.
Which, unfortunately, is why you shouldn't depend on them to store such data in the first place.
