DENVER — For years, Lauren Anderson shared her life online. Her Facebook and Instagram accounts followed her recovery after a devastating accident that left her hospitalized, undergoing multiple surgeries and relearning how to walk. She shared her fitness journey, life as a professor, travels with her husband and even posts about her pet rabbits.
“It was kind of my outlet, my safe space,” Anderson told Denver7 Investigates' Jaclyn Allen. “I had strangers on the internet who were cheering me on and telling me that you’re not alone.”
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Over nearly two decades, Anderson built a following of thousands across Facebook and Instagram. At one point, she says, social media became a major source of income.
“There was a point in time where I was making probably over $5,000 a month using social media,” she said. “I’d made over six figures using social media.”
Now, she says all of it is gone.
Anderson says she woke up earlier this month in downtown Denver to an email from Meta warning that someone had logged into her Facebook account from New York while she was asleep.
Within hours, she said her account was permanently disabled by Meta.
“A hacker had taken over my account from different IP addresses in New York, Texas and London,” Anderson said. “And Facebook disabled my account and there was nothing I could do about it.”
Meta told her only that she violated “community standards,” she said.
After downloading her account data, Anderson said her husband discovered login records from multiple unfamiliar IP addresses.
She said they also found evidence suggesting someone uploaded illegal images during what appeared to be an identity verification process.
“I was absolutely disgusted and appalled that one, someone would do that on my account,” Anderson said, “And two, that Facebook sent us that data.”
She says her appeal was denied almost immediately.
“It was an immediate rejection,” she said. “No one looked into it. I have not been able to speak to a human being about this. Everything’s AI and everything’s automated.”
Anderson’s case is one of several Denver7 Investigates has reviewed involving users who say they were suddenly locked out of Facebook or Instagram accounts, sometimes under serious allegations, without clear explanations or meaningful access to human review.
Denver7 Investigates
Suspended from social: Coloradans say Meta wrongfully shut down their accounts
Denver7 Investigates previously reported on Denver business owner David Martinelli, who said Meta disabled his accounts under allegations involving child sexual exploitation.
“This isn’t real. This can’t be real,” Martinelli told Denver7 Investigates in 2025.
Federal records obtained by Scripps News Indianapolis through open records requests documented complaints from users across the country who said they were falsely accused of violating Meta policies involving child sexual exploitation.
“When I saw this, it was like child exploitation — I was like, 'what?'” one Indiana teacher told WRTV in 2025.
Now, even Meta’s own Oversight Board is publicly raising concerns about account disablements, appeals and transparency.
In June, the independent Oversight Board issued its first major review involving Meta account bans and warned about what it described as broader “due process concerns” involving account disablements.
The board wrote that Meta disables a “staggering number” of accounts every year and said many cases are “inexplicable” and “unexplained.”
“Users are often unable to appeal or discover that the appeal mechanisms are opaque, impractical or unavailable,” board member Michael McConnell wrote in a public commentary accompanying the decision.
The board called on Meta to provide clearer explanations for disabled accounts, improve transparency, offer more effective appeals and increase human review in serious cases.
“There are a lot of desperate people out there who are incredibly frustrated that their accounts have been shut down,” Oversight Board co-chair Suzanne Nossel told WMAR in Baltimore earlier this year.
“In some cases, the account is their livelihood,” Nossel said. “They’re running a small business on Meta platforms or it’s their social lifeline.”
But months after those recommendations, many reforms remain incomplete.
In public implementation updates posted online, Meta says several recommendations are still only “implementing in part” or “assessing feasibility.”
One recommendation called on Meta to ensure appeals are reviewed by different human reviewers rather than the same reviewer who made the original enforcement decision.
Another recommendation urged Meta to prioritize additional review for potentially erroneous page removals and account enforcement decisions.
Meta acknowledged the importance of preventing accounts from being “erroneously unpublished” but said broader system improvements would “take some time.”
Denver7 Investigates reached out repeatedly to Meta about Anderson’s case, additional Colorado complaints and the status of reforms recommended by the Oversight Board.
Meta did not respond.
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Coloradans continue to beg for help over hacked Facebook accounts
Brittany Watson-Smith, founder of the nonprofit advocacy group People Over Platforms Worldwide, says complaints continue pouring in from around the globe.
“Every day somebody is reaching out saying they don’t know why, they don’t even know how to appeal,” Watson-Smith told Denver7 Investigates.
Her organization launched an online petition calling for more accountability and human review from major social media companies. The petition has now gathered more than 66,000 signatures worldwide.
The petition argues that platforms increasingly rely on AI-driven moderation and automated enforcement systems while reducing access to human customer support.
Watson-Smith says users often describe feeling trapped in endless automated loops.
“They have their Meta AI assistant, and I’ve personally spoken to it, and it does take you in loops,” she said. “It’ll give you a link. The link won’t work. It takes you back to their AI assistant.”
She says the consequences can be devastating.
“Some of them, it’s been probably going on for a year at this point,” Watson-Smith said. “It’s almost like a digital isolation for many people.”
For Anderson, the loss goes far beyond a social media profile.
“I know it’s just social media,” she said, “but I’ve gone through so much personal growth over the past 15 years sharing my journey. I’m never going to be able to talk to 20,000 of those people again.”
She said she and her husband have contacted the FBI, Denver Police Department, Colorado Attorney General’s Office and Meta.
Next, she said, may be small claims court.
“I felt like I was doing everything right, and at the end of the day, it didn’t matter," Anderson said. “There has to be a better way to keep people safe on the internet, and I think Meta should be responsible for that.”
