Instagram disabled two accounts belonging to Savoy, a gay bar in Orlando, on Oct. 20 after flagging them under Meta’s “human exploitation” policy, co-owner Brandon Llewellyn told WKMG News 6 and Orlando Weekly.
“They say it’s a human exploitation, basically accusing us of human trafficking, which obviously is not happening here,” Llewellyn told News 6 in a story that ran Oct. 29.
The flag landed two days after Orlando’s Come Out With Pride weekend. Savoy has been open 22 years. Llewellyn said nobody has told him which post set it off.
Savoy Orlando Got an Apology From Instagram, Then a Permanent Deletion
Llewellyn appealed the same day. He told Orlando Weekly that Instagram “found we hadn’t broken any rules, apologized for getting it wrong, and told us we could use it again.”
Then a final notice came saying the account had been permanently deleted. Savoy turned to a third handle, @savoy.orlando, while seeking to restore its original accounts.
“We’re not able to let people know about our events for the week or for the weekend or anything,” Llewellyn told News 6. “And normally we would be paying them to advertise that as well.”
“Now we’re going over a week now, and we still haven’t had an actual conversation with a human being from Meta trying to resolve the issue,” Llewellyn said.
Meta answered News 6 on Thursday evening. “These accounts were removed in error and have been reinstated,” a spokesperson said in an email. The station said it was asking Meta how the error happened.
Savoy also confirmed the restoration on its official Instagram account. “Hello again, Orlando. Our accounts have been restored,” the bar wrote, thanking people who had shared its case and calling for fair reviews for other LGBTQ+ businesses.
Anthem Orlando lost its account the same day and got it back Oct. 27. Co-owner Mike Vacirca told News 6, “We appealed immediately, and then three days later we got a permanent ban for our account.”
Fans followed the club to a backup page in the meantime. “But we went from 12,500 people down to 1,000 people. It’s a huge hit,” Vacirca said.
“There was no picture in there that’s even remotely off of G-rated,” he told Orlando Weekly. He added, “We still don’t know what we were accused of.”
Orlando Weekly found the Instagram for Stiffy’s, another Orlando gay bar, marked “unavailable” as of Oct. 24. In St. Petersburg, accounts for Cocktail, The Wet Spot and The Ball still showed as unavailable Oct. 29, the paper reported.
In Oakland, Valentino Carrillo lost the Instagram and Facebook pages for his two Latino LGBTQ clubs, Que Rico and Next Level, on Sept. 30, the Bay Area Reporter reported Oct. 26.
“No explanation, no email, no nothing, not even a warning,” Carrillo told the paper. He said he’s spent more than $12,000 advertising the clubs on Meta. “Definitely our Fridays have slowed down a lot, because that’s the main night we have advertised on Meta,” he said.
Meta’s Human Exploitation Rule and the Gay Bars Swept Up by It
Under its human exploitation policy, Meta says it will “remove content that facilitates or coordinates the exploitation of humans, including human trafficking,” as the policy text is quoted in a 2024 Oversight Board decision.
When the Castro club Beaux lost its Instagram in September, Meta spokesperson Erin O’Malley told the Bay Area Reporter, “That account was removed in error, it should be back up.”
Asked whether LGBTQ accounts get wrongly pulled more often, O’Malley said, “I actually am not sure, but I think yeah, sometimes, that happens.”
GLAAD told the paper that “Meta’s systems are errantly suspending LGBTQ accounts at an extremely high rate and with enormous negative impacts.”
Oversight Board Faulted Meta’s Account Bans in June
Meta’s Oversight Board, which reviews the company’s moderation calls, said June 4 that it has “due process concerns relating to how Meta disables user accounts.” In that decision, the board said people should get “detailed reasons for account disablement” and a real chance to argue their side in writing.
“In some cases, their account is their livelihood,” board member Suzanne Nossel told WMAR-2 News in Baltimore.
A petition against wrongful Meta bans has drawn nearly 67,000 signatures since May 2025, RNZ reported this week.
“So I understand that they’re operating at scale, but if it’s a severe enough consequence and it’s a severe enough reason, there should be humans doing some kind of review in this process,” Vacirca told News 6.
Orlando Weekly reported Thursday afternoon that Savoy’s two original accounts still hadn’t come back. Meta’s statement that the accounts had been reinstated came hours later.
