A small business owner in Vancouver was taken by surprise one morning when she went to reply to a customer on Instagram and instead found that Meta had disabled her store’s account.
Randa Salloum relied on Instagram to promote the consignment items she sells in her business, Collective Will Secondhand & Vintage. With just over 8000 followers, the sudden loss of the store’s Instagram account has already dealt a significant blow to sales.
“I get revenue that comes through Instagram, whether that’s someone buying something directly or they see it on Instagram stories or on the feed and they come into the store. So, I lost an income stream,” she shared.
“I don’t know how long I’m not going to have my account for, so I don’t know how much money I’m going to end up losing.”
As well as impacting her revenue as a small business owner, the loss of the account is also impacting Salloum’s well-being by limiting how much she is able to connect with her local community.
“It’s the immediate, without-warning disconnect from the community that you’ve cultivated and everything that you have worked on for three years. It’s just gone, and you are just left to deal with the fact that it’s gone, and like, truly, it’s a grieving process,” she said.
“I feel like I lost 10 pounds in one day just because of the stress that it took on my body physically and emotionally.”
Randa Salloum/Submitted
The Collective Will Instagram page was not just a means of attracting income for Salloum. She also used it as a platform to promote other small businesses and encourage people to buy local.
“I also host a lot of events in store for other small businesses, and a part of that process is promoting them to the community and giving them exposure,” she said.
“I had to cancel some of my store events coming up this month because I don’t know when I’m going to be able to promote them.”
In addition to limiting her ability to promote other small businesses, Salloum highlighted the impact this will have on other people’s jobs.
“It doesn’t just affect me and my revenue and my income, but it also affects people that I hire,” she shared. “If Instagram sales were impacting my revenue in such a way and then that stream has gone like, can I afford to hire people?”
Randa Salloum/Submitted
When she discovered her account was disabled, she reached out to Meta for an explanation, as there was no reason provided for why the account was disabled. The Collective Will Instagram page had no prior violations of the community guidelines before the account was disabled.
“It doesn’t tell you anything, and then it says you can read the terms and conditions, and it’s like, well, it can literally be anything that’s in there,” Salloum shared.
“I’ve sent in help tickets. No one has responded.”
After speaking with other small business owners who have faced similar situations, Salloum is still unsure when she will receive an update on her appeal. According to her, other businesses have seen a decision made anywhere between a day to over a year.
Salloum pointed out that situations like hers speak to a bigger picture about the imbalance in power that platforms like Meta have over the success of local businesses like hers.
“Something for people to think about is that we have given so much power to one platform, and we’ve allowed them to buy out so much of what we use on a day to day,” Salloum said.
“They have the power to just take it away from us.”
Daily Hive has reached out to Meta for a comment but did not hear back in time for publishing.