CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that the layoffs were part of Meta’s “Year of Efficiency,” during which the company will scale back costs after disappointing fourth-quarter results in 2022. Its Reality Lab division focused on the Metaverse lost $13.7 billion last year, for example.
Katya Karlova, a verified Instagram influencer with more than 250,000 followers, told CNBC that since the layoffs she’d seen a rise in scammers stealing her pictures and creating fake accounts. Some had even lured users into sending money for adult content, she said.
“This is really damaging,” Karlova told CNBC, adding that Instagram was already slow in removing fake accounts, but after the layoffs, her requests for support from customer service were going “into the void.”
CNBC reported that MeLynda Rinker, a certified community manager for Meta, was overseeing a Facebook group called 50 Shades of Pink, which had more than 420,000 members, when she noticed a problem with its backend system in February.
Per CNBC, the system, which was used to track analytics and metric data, showed that there was zero user activity, and this was unusual because the group had regular posters. When Rinker tried to contact customer support, nobody responded, she told the outlet.
Insider reached out to Karlova and Rinker for further comment via email and on Facebook and LinkedIn respectively but did not immediately hear back.
Rinker previously had access to Groups Support, a team she could contact to get direct support from Facebook employees to sort out technical issues, but it was shut down in January, CNBC reported. The alternative was trying to reach employees through Facebook’s general help center.
Rinker, along with one other person impacted, said they only resolved their issues by asking friends who work for Meta to help.
Meta did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment outside regular working hours. The company declined to provide comment to CNBC but provided the outlet with examples of its investment in customer service in recent years.
The company has started building a customer service division, Bloomberg reported last year. The report said the service would aim to help users recover posts or accounts that were removed unexpectedly. Users have often complained that it’s difficult to reach employees for support, per Bloomberg.
The company is rolling out Meta Verified, a paid verification subscription service, which will reportedly provide extra security like “proactive monitoring” for account impersonation, per CNBC.
One Meta customer service contractor Charlotte, whose name was changed to protect her identity, previously told Insider’s Lara O’Reilly that she only earns just over the national minimum wage per month in Portugal for her work despite fielding death threats and abuse.
“I see a lot of [Meta users and customers] say ‘Why is Facebook not helping us?'” Charlotte told Insider. “If we could, we would help. Facebook is literally not giving us the tools, but it’s letting us take the blame.”
Charlotte added that because of the company’s focus on the metaverse, it “feels like their priorities are elsewhere.”
If you’re a current or former Meta employee on the customer service team or a social media user with an experience to share, contact Sawdah Bhaimiya at [email protected] or via @sawdahbhaimiya on Twitter.