Joel Glaser, a broadcasting executive from Minnesota, is working to regain access to his Facebook account, which was disabled without warning, resulting in the loss of years of content and history.
The president and CEO of AMPERS, the Association of Minnesota Public Educational Radio Stations, Glaser reported that he received an email from Facebook stating his account was suspended for 180 days due to an appeal regarding a violation of the platform’s policy on child sexual exploitation. He shared his confusion about the situation, explaining, “The next thing I know, I get an email saying my account has been suspended for 180 days pending an appeal for child sexual exploitation."
According to Glaser, the posts that led to this suspension contained news and educational material, including a missing child alert and a story about a 104-year-old Holocaust survivor. He firmly denies having any content that could be interpreted as child sexual exploitation and suspects that Facebook’s automated moderation system mistakenly linked the two completely unrelated posts.
The appeal process has not been user-friendly for Glaser. “You have to scan your face in five different places to verify it's you, and that’s your only chance to appeal. There are no questions to answer, no opportunity to understand the ban's rationale,” he expressed.
The timeline of events shows that Glaser received the suspension notification on June 25. He appealed shortly after, only to receive a response two hours later stating that his appeal would be reviewed. Remarkably, just a minute after that notification, his appeal was denied, and his account was permanently disabled.
Glaser theorizes that Facebook’s algorithms improperly connected the posts regarding child welfare with the Holocaust narrative, which led to the unjust ban. He emphasized the wider impact of this action on his professional work, noting that pages he managed, including a project documenting Minnesota's history—a page with thousands of posts—were also encompassed in the suspension. "I was the lead administrator for MN90 Minnesota History in 90 Seconds, and somehow that got swept up in the ban as well," Glaser stated.
The repercussions of this situation have been significant, subjecting Glaser to the loss of valuable content and years of work. He is now striving to have both his personal account and the Minnesota history page reinstated.
In response to this alarming suspension, the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office has intervened, stating their intention to discuss Glaser's accounts with Facebook representatives in hopes of rectifying any errors stemming from the automated content moderation processes.
While Glaser has contacted Meta regarding the issue, he has yet to see any progress in restoring his accounts. FOX 9 has also reached out to Meta for their perspective and is awaiting a response. At this point, it remains uncertain when or if Glaser’s accounts will be recovered.
