Some of Melbourne and Sydneyβs best-known queer venues have been locked out of Facebook and Instagram accounts that they spent more than a decade building, in a wave of Meta suspensions that operators say cut their advertising to zero and left them with no way to reach a human being at the company.
At least five venues have been hit since mid-July: Melbourneβs The 86, The Laird and UBQ, and Sydneyβs Palms on Oxford and Tribe @ 231. Where Meta gave reasons, they ranged from human exploitation and trafficking to a review over alleged βdrugs and gunsβ.
It now concedes the pages were βflagged in errorβ, but an expert says automated content moderation tools can be more likely to mistakenly flag queer content pages as inappropriate.
Anthony Wallace, owner of Fitzroy cabaret and burlesque bar The 86, opened his Facebook page to a notice saying his account had breached community standards. He pressed appeal. The page refreshed within about a minute: permanently disabled.
βI do not believe a human being has been involved in this process,β Wallace said.
The 86βs page and its 6000 followers stayed visible to the public throughout. Wallace could not post to it, read its messages or manage it, and could not reach the estimated 300 performers he books through the platform.
βFacebook has received 100 per cent of our marketing spend for years,β he said. βTheyβve engineered a situation where weβve become completely dependent on their platform, and weβve paid for it.β
The damage goes beyond the venue: burlesque producer Ferri Maya is due to launch a new show, Skool of Rock, at The 86 on August 8, and had been counting on the venueβs page to find an audience for it.
βAs the show is a brand-new one we donβt have our own audience online to reach out to,β Maya said. Barring a late rush via word of mouth, βwe may have to cancel the show from runningβ.
In Sydney, Palms on Oxford and Tribe @ 231 lost access within an hour of each other. Chief executive Michael Lewis said the venues had linked their profiles through Meta a day earlier and had begun promoting themselves as β100 per cent gay-owned and operatedβ.
βItβs all a bit coincidental,β Lewis said. βAnd Iβm not a big believer in coincidence. They send you an email telling you youβve been naughty, but wonβt tell you what youβve done. It says you can appeal it, but the only way to do that is to log into the account, which theyβve already blocked you out of.β
At UBQ on Melbourneβs Smith Street, about 50 posts were flagged. Marketing and technology manager Mitchell Sheldrick said the common thread were the words gay, queer or drag. There was no warning, no email, no notification. He worked it out only when the Facebook page disconnected itself from the venueβs Instagram account.
Sheldrick got back in by deleting every flagged post and waiting out the appeals process, which took about a week. Part way through, Meta told him its automated systems had made an error and the restriction was lifted. It was not. The only routes to a person, he said, were a Meta Verified subscription at $149.99 a month for phone access, or a large enough ad spend.
Asked about the suspensions, a Meta spokesperson said: βA number of accounts associated with these venues were flagged in error.
βWe apologise and are working to ensure full access is returned as quickly as possible to all the affected businesses. We are continuously improving our systems to reduce errors like this.β
The company did not say what caused the errors, why the venues could not reach anyone to correct them, nor whether queer businesses have been disproportionately affected. It has previously denied targeting any group.
Errors of this kind are not random, according to Zahra Stardust, a Queensland University of Technology digital communication lecturer researching platform moderation of sexual content under an Australian Research Council grant.
Automated tools are built on heteronormative assumptions that sexualise LGBTQIA+ bodies and flag them as adult content, Stardust said, and they conflate queer communities with sex, illegality and violence. Keyword scanning does the rest. Harm-reduction posts about drug use are read as promoting the sale of illicit substances. Content about transphobia and racism is removed rather than recognised as political speech.
On June 4, in its first review of Metaβs power to delete accounts outright, the companyβs own oversight board found the system raises systemic human rights concerns, and that users who pay for Meta Verified support receive no meaningful help once disabled.
Not-for-profit Repro Uncensored, which documents removals and helps restore accounts, has recorded more than 600 suspensions by major platforms across about 40 countries this year. Founder Martha Dimitratou said Australia was among the worst affected. Her organisation is suing Meta in the Netherlands alongside Dutch queer groups, and wants governments here and in Europe to enforce laws already on the books.
Australian regulators have flagged the gap. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has recommended platforms be held to mandatory dispute-resolution standards that include escalation to a human, and last year backed an external ombudsman scheme. Draft legislation for the federal governmentβs digital duty of care is due later this year.
UBQ, which turned four this week, has its page back. At the time of publication, The 86 did not.
βSomeone said to me if youβve seen the word disabled, it probably means itβs gone for good,β bar owner Wallace said.
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David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X or email.