Exclusive: Australian small business owners are losing more than just money after being flagged by Meta's AI enforcement systems – they're having their personal accounts wiped too.

Jared Hartley runs a tattoo removal studio in Canberra and was baffled when his business Instagram account was suspended last October.

Meta said the account had violated community standards; Hartley said it wasn't true.

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He followed Meta's instructions to appeal the ban, had the account reinstated, only to have it suspended again – twice.

Then Meta disabled his personal Instagram account, and in doing so wiped away years of memories, photos and chats with Hartley's late sister, who died in 2025.

He says his desperate attempts to recover the account went nowhere.

"They said they couldn't do anything," he told nine.com.au.

"When you lose your account, they say you can download your information … but all the file contains is your settings."

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