An Aussie mum lost access to her Facebook and Instagram accounts for seven weeks after using three little words to compliment her daughter's appearance in a private chat. Whitsundays resident Donna Buckingham is one of millions around the world accused by parent company Meta of breaching its mysterious "community guidelines".
Donna was accused of having breached the tech giant's policies on "child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity", an accusation that left her shocked. But after re-reading her chat, she could see why the company's largely AI-driven moderators could have misinterpreted banter with her 13-year-old.
The pair had been sharing videos of netball drills, and they then turned to discussing a picture of Donna's daughter in her netball jacket.
"Mum, noooo!" the daughter said, displeased by the image.
"You are beautiful," Donna responded.
"Not in that," the daughter said, before Donna jokingly doubled down with, "Yes fit af".
Donna said she welcomed Meta's efforts to try and prevent actual "child sexual exploitation" on its platforms. "I like that they were looking after my daughter," she said.
But, because she is uncertain about what words or conversations could trigger a ban, she will be more cautious about how she communicates on social media and messaging apps.
Social media users around the world face the same problem as Donna -- having to negotiate which words will trigger an account suspension.
Monash University social media expert Dr Emily van der Nagel said this is particularly apparent on TikTok, which she said is known to be "overzealous" in its sensitivity to sexual or violent terms, and so people adopt coded language known as "algospeak".
"People are using 'unalive', for example, to talk about death because they don't want to flag that they're talking about a sensitive topic," she told Yahoo.
"Or with sex, we don't talk about it in a straightforward way. Someone might say they're a spicy accountant [instead of sex worker] to soften the explicitness of a conversation."
It's particularly users from diverse communities who are likely to fall foul of social media regulations, and so they are more likely to adopt algospeak -- a practice of coded discussion. This often means using emojis with alternate meanings specific to their group as a way of "tiptoeing" around sensitive topics.
"People from the queer community, people from sex worker communities, even people who are trying to educate young people about bodies are using algospeak to try to discuss things that are really important to them," Dr van der Nagel said.
Donna's biggest concern about Meta policing social media accounts is the difficulty of navigating its appeals process, particularly the lack of access to human moderators to help.
The suspension was made on July 13, and was appealed by Donna on the same day. But access was not restored until Yahoo News contacted Meta on August 27 about the matter.
Explaining its actions, Meta said, "We take action on accounts that violate our policies, and people can appeal if they think we've made a mistake."
Although Donna is far from being the only user accused of "child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity", Meta denies it is undertaking new or targeted over-enforcement. And it claims there are different reasons for each account's suspension.
Meta uses both AI and humans to monitor accounts for potentially suspicious behaviour, and it concedes its systems aren't perfect. The company also noted it has an appeals process that results in accounts being restored when they get things wrong.
What continues to perplex Donna about her suspension is the length of time it took to get it lifted. "All they needed to do was have someone look at our DMs... But there's no one to talk to about the problem," she said.
Donna does use Instagram and Facebook for her content creation business, and the loss did have a financial impact. She also lost the ability to communicate with friends and acquaintances who she generally messages, rather than calling on the phone.
"I lost all my old chats, old acquaintances, and the photos of someone who had passed away," she said.
But Donna's biggest concern about the sudden suspension was that it occurred just after her brother was diagnosed with an illness. The Facebook suspension meant she was locked out of Messenger, and in turn, her family chat, which they were using to arrange treatment and coordinate support for him.
Following the suspension, Donna no longer feels confident using Messenger to communicate with her children or their friends.
"Before, I would send her stuff that was interesting for a teenager, in particular, netball drills. I went to send my daughter something last night, but now I'm too scared to DM her," she said.
Dr van der Nagel notes the biggest issue with turning to technology to scrape and monitor conversations is that they struggle to understand the nuance of conversations and the relationships between the people having them.
"We as humans are very good at context. There are all kinds of ways that we might joke around, be sarcastic, or deliver a message in ways that don't necessarily line up with the text. This makes it very tricky to have authentic conversations," she said.