Meta rarely responds when users complain about being banned from their accounts, according to an EU-based independent dispute resolution body. 

Appeals Centre Europe looked at 4,600 cases of Facebook, Instagram and Threads users who said they had been wrongly banned, but Meta provided evidence in fewer than 100 of these cases.

The BBC was contacted by hundreds of Facebook and Instagram users last year from around the world, including the UK, who said they were wrongly banned and couldn’t get their accounts back.

Meta has been contacted for comment.

Appeals Centre Europe is one of a number of independent dispute settlement bodies which allow people in the EU to challenge social media platforms’ decisions, including on account bans and content moderation.

Its report provides only a glimpse into the broader social media landscape in Europe, where hundreds of millions of content items are removed annually for a host of reasons.

EU regulations require that online platforms “engage in good faith” with the body, but the body’s ruling is not binding on any platform.

The most frequent complaint it received over the past year (until March 2026) was related to account bans.

Under these conditions, platforms will not be able or willing to give us the content we need to review their decisions by ourselves in the vast majority of cases of account suspensions, it said in its transparency report.

Meta’s report said that it had supplied relevant content for fewer than 100 of the 4,600+ cases of account bans, and that this “frustrated users”.

Over 500 individuals reached out to the BBC last year denouncing their Instagram or Facebook profiles for being banned without having the opportunity to appeal or talk to anyone at Meta.

Some mentioned the massive human impact it has had on them, such as concerns the police may get involved, and that bans can have an impact on their online businesses.

When faced with specific issues, Meta has denied users comment on what was going on, although it often overturned bans when users made individual requests to it.

Alleged hate speech not removed

The Appeals Centre report also made judgements on content flagged to it which users said should be taken down, including more than 1,400 cases of content flagged as hate speech.

“In over two-thirds of our decisions regarding hate speech, we decided that platforms did not enforce their own policies, but left up hateful content,” said chief executive Thomas Hughes.

He pointed to examples such as “misogynistic, racist, homophobic and transphobic posts.”

On TikTok, 83% of potential hate speech was not taken down, followed by 74% for Instagram.

The figures on Facebook were 61% and on YouTube 58%.

One such instance of a decision where Appeals Centre Europe disagreed with platforms is when racist comments likening black footballers to monkeys were left up after a Champions League match on Instagram.

In another case, it said that antisemitic videos uploaded by “mainstream” Poles were still available on YouTube despite directly violating its hate speech guidelines.

And it noted an AI-generated video about the Russia-Ukraine war was also allowed to stay up on TikTok, which it believed was in breach of its rules on misinformation.

In over 10,000 reports, however, social media companies didn’t offer any relevant material for review in 72%.

The dispute body claimed it disagreed with the platform 59% of the time in the 2,920 decisions it could review.

Appeals Centre Europe also did not have access to regular information about the implementation of their decisions and was “pushing platforms to provide this”, it said. 

The BBC was unable to secure an on-the-record comment from TikTok, but the company said it met with the Appeals Centre and had sent emails to them.

TikTok was found to have received 56,549 reports from users in the EU over illegal content, including hate speech, in the second half of 2025, according to the transparency report by the company.

During the same time, another transparency report claimed to have taken down 112 million videos, comments and adverts in violation of their terms of service.

The policy outlines “clear guidelines to prohibit content that promotes violence or hatred towards individuals or groups based on certain attributes,” YouTube said, adding that it enforces this policy with stringency.

The company was dedicated to working alongside out-of-court dispute bodies, including Appeals Centre Europe and said it had agreed to share disputed content with them.

Google, the owner of YouTube, has announced that more than 150,000 videos and 32,000 channels have been pulled down from the platform over the period from October to December 2025 in a transparency report that covers the entire globe.