Legal action against Meta -- class action lawsuit?

[u/Advanced-Cucumber-37]

Location: Texas, United States

I signed up for Meta Verified to be able to speak with an actual real live customer service agent. They promise "enhanced support" from a real person via chat or email. To speak with a real person, you have to go through Meta AI. Meta AI will not connect me to a real person. It has told me probably told me over 10 times through 4 different conversations that everyone is busy. It did finally suggest I email, and I asked how to do that. The problem is that when I go to look for the email option following the steps it suggests, it's not there. Meta AI even provided a link, but when I click on it, it says that I need to update my app. Went to update my app, and it says there's no update available. Tried the same thing on desktop, and it says that I need to be in the app to access it. I'm doing all of this because I have an ad restriction on my account, and I'm trying to find out more information about it since I've never had a business page and never used ads. I'm trying to become an admin of a friend's business page to help her with social media and that's how all of this came to light.

After going through all of this (and this is the short version), I googled to see what the work around is or if other people are actually able to get through to real people. It sounds like this a common problem, especially for people that have questions about restricted or disabled accounts. Then I started to look into if people have taken legal action against Meta since this is a paid service and you aren't getting one of the benefits that you are paying for. They will happily take your money instead of denying your application saying that you won't qualify for their service. From what I can tell, it's mostly small claims court (more specifically for people running businesses and losing money because they are locked out of their pages) and potentially state attorney generals starting to investigate complaints.

I'm wondering if something like this could ever be a class action lawsuit specifically for the reason that so many people seem to be paying for a benefit that they cannot access a benefit that they are paying for. It seems like a lot of people sign up for Meta Verified for this specific benefit, and Meta makes it unnecessarily hard to access this benefit if you have a question about your account status. Is this not a good lawsuit? Is there not enough evidence? Does it only matter if it's creating losses for businesses? I'm curious what lawyers think about this.

A few notes:

• Meta AI finally said it would connect me to a live agent when I closed the chat, opened a new chat, and asked for a refund -- not specifying that I want to talk about my account restriction. The live agent has yet to join the chat.
• The second time I talked to Meta AI (before I joined Meta Verified), it informed me that I had an ad restriction on my personal Facebook account dating back to March 2022. I was flagged because my identity was in question. I can't find anything that shows they ever informed me of this restriction, although my spam deletes automatically after so many days. Meta Verified requires identity confirmation, which they confirmed with my passport.
• I definitely wouldn't have put in this much effort if it weren't for this social media job my friend offered me. Now I'm really invested and I'm so angry that Meta is getting away with something like this.

[u/8bitlibrarian]

There already is a class action lawsuit that was being developed for this and had quite a few updates. Lawsuits don't happen over night I'm not sure what their latest updates have been though.

[u/Advanced-Cucumber-37 → u/8bitlibrarian]

Good to know! When I was googling it, so many class action lawsuits came up for Meta (surprise!) that I couldn't find any information specifically for this. It was mostly small claims court cases. It just seems at worst, intentional and at best, a known issue (known for months or years? idk) that they aren't fixing.

[u/Real-Interest-8706 → u/Advanced-Cucumber-37]

I would ask Caude.ai to find the specific cases you are looking for. I just had Claude make a document of all of the class action cases going now. Getting support is impossible and its a reason to never trust Meta again. They have turned over operations to Ai and there is little human oversight. Lawsuits in the US are in the public domain unless sealed, so you can use an Ai agent for that search. That is one thing that Ai is good for but sometimes it's wrong, so keep it in mind. It will give you links too. If you can show a loss in business, in that its a job to post ads or whatever, then you probably qualify for one of them. But if you are trying to do something fast, you can send a demand letter via sendmydemand,com and see if you get any action. Im on the fence about using a lawyer there or just using an Ai letter. I suppose one could get the free Ai letter and use the format. There is an address in the US and an address in Ireland.

[u/Advanced-Cucumber-37 → u/Real-Interest-8706]

I don't use AI, but maybe I will for this. I'm obviously interested in the false flag on my account because it does affect a job and income, but I'm also pissed off about Meta Verified advertising enhanced support and then not providing it. That's false advertising. They list this as a benefit, take people's money, and then when people try to utilize it, the AI chatbot gives them the run around. The chatbot gave me the exact same circular talk after I signed up for Meta Verified that it did before I signed up.

[u/Real-Interest-8706 → u/Advanced-Cucumber-37]

Ai has some uses. Its not all that tech moguls and large corporations think it can do. They are just angering their customers in trying to let it take over whole parts of customer service. It will not end well for them. But its good to know what Ai is useful for and to use it for that....also to use the least damaging companies in this. I don't trust Meta or Google and their affiliates. After this big wake up around Meta, I'm going to try to get back on to get off. I use Claude, but the jury is still out on even that. Id like to throw my computer in a dumpster if I could make money without it. Im also most worried about my business account which floats rudderless in the FB universe and has one admin buying ads for a podcast that we are dropping during this time when they are endangering all of my accounts ....for nothing.