February 21, 2026
Banned by bots, roasted by users
Meta Deployed AI and It Is Killing Our Agency
Agencies say bots keep banning workers; commenters think Meta wants them gone
TLDR: A major ad agency says Meta’s automated checks keep insta-banning new staff with no workable appeal, threatening their business. Commenters claim Meta wants to replace agencies with AI-made ads, share their own random bans, and argue whether it’s master plan or messy automation—either way, it’s chaos for marketers and users.
An agency spending millions on Facebook and Instagram ads says every new employee’s work account gets auto-banned within hours—even after uploading IDs and face scans—and they can’t appeal because the appeal tool sits behind the very login they’ve lost. The update that “almost everything is automated now” lit a match: the crowd read it as confirmation that robots, not humans, are running the gates. Cue rage and eye-rolls.
The hottest take? That Meta doesn’t want agencies at all—“cut out the middleman” and let businesses buy AI-made ads with no pesky humans. Others piled on with receipts: everyday users are getting booted too, pointing to a cottage industry of subreddits like r/facebookdisabledme, r/FixMyInstagram, and r/MetaLawsuits. Skeptics clap back: this isn’t “AI” magic—just blunt-force automation gone wild. Meanwhile, lawsuit energy is rising (“guess we have to sue”), horror stories include instant Instagram bans and unexplained WhatsApp lockouts, and the memes write themselves: “Boss-level CAPTCHA: show your birth certificate.” The vibe? A platform so automated it can’t tell agencies from bot farms—and a community split between “this is the plan” and “this is incompetence,” united only in roasting the banhammer.
Key Points
- •Agency managing millions in Meta ad spend reports immediate bans of newly created work accounts despite full ID verification.
- •Bans occur before any ad account activity, affecting multiple specialists and social media managers.
- •Appeal process via the Account Quality dashboard is inaccessible due to login lockouts, creating a circular dead end.
- •Repeated attempts to create new accounts result in repeated bans; the agency reports no similar issues with Google or TikTok.
- •Agency requests a manual onboarding path and human support override for login-related bans; an update notes increased attention and multiple contacts with Meta support.