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Locked out of your Facebook account? Meta is finally testing live humans to help

Facebook and Instagram users have never had access to an actual person to help them get back into locked accounts. Now Meta is running a small test of live chat support for the first time.

The Meta logo displayed on a sscreen above a smartphone showing a collection of reaction emoji

Meta is finally testing live chat to help people who are locked out of their accounts.

Photo: Fritz Jorgensen/iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus

Facebook and Instagram users have complained for years that when they are locked out of their accounts, there is no phone number to call to get help fixing the problem. Now Meta is finally running a small test of a live-chat program to help users who can't access their accounts because they have been locked out for unusual activity or for potentially violating the community standards.

The initial test will only be available to a limited number of English-speaking users, according to today's announcement.

Meta is also releasing new content moderation tools for creators on their platforms, including more refined abilities to hide unwanted comments and block specific words or phrases and iterations of those words used to get around blockers. The company has also created a moderation assistant tool that will allow creators to set specific moderation rules in order to automate some of the process.

Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

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