Meta is launching a new centralized support hub for Facebook and Instagram users, the company announced on Thursday, adding that its prior support options haven’t “always met expectations.” Within the hub, users will find tools to report an account issue, recover an account they’ve lost access to, and get answers via AI-powered search and an AI assistant.
The feature is rolling out now to global users on Facebook and Instagram on both the iOS and Android apps.
The new AI assistant being tested is designed to offer more personalized help with things like account recovery, managing your profile, or updating your settings. This particular feature will first be available to Facebook users, but the company expects to roll it out to other apps in the future.
The company claims that its use of AI systems is helping protect users’ accounts, noting that account hacks have decreased by over 30% globally across Facebook and Instagram. AI is also used to help identify and stop other threats, like phishing, suspicious logins, compromised accounts, and more.
Additionally, Meta says that AI has helped it avoid disabling accounts by mistake more than ever before and has sped up the appeals process when mistakes occurred.
However, that claim doesn’t match up with the lived experience of thousands of users of Meta’s apps, who complain that they’ve lost access to their accounts or Facebook Pages due to mistakes made by Meta’s systems. Some even suspect that AI is to blame, as the mistakes and support requests don’t seem to involve any human oversight. A portion of these users are threatening or engaged in legal action, particularly when losing their accounts has real-world impacts on their businesses or livelihoods.
The situation has now gotten so bad that an entire Reddit forum was set up this year to help people who are suing Meta over their disabled accounts.
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Meta believes the new hub could address these kinds of problems, saying that it will centralize account recovery options and offer a more streamlined account recovery experience with clearer guidelines and simpler verification. Plus, the system sends out improved SMS and email alerts about risky activity and will recognize users’ devices better than before, Meta promises. And it will connect users with other tools to secure their account, like running a security checkup, setting up two-factor authentication, or adding a passkey.
Account recovery methods now also offer the option to take an optional selfie video to verify your identity.
While Meta claims the new hub will make things easier on its users, simply the act of moving around where settings and help are found can lead to confusion. Over the years, Meta has regularly relocated key areas like its account settings, data management tools, and privacy features, ostensibly to make things easier for users. But the constant changes also mean that users can’t remember where to find things in the app, as they’re often not where they were found before, and various menus and navigation have changed.
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