Spent $60 on a VPN after my main account got locked for posting a work document

I uploaded a screenshot of a public city council meeting agenda to a local news group. The platform flagged it as 'sensitive personal data' and locked my account for a week. I paid for a VPN service to route my traffic and made a new account to appeal the decision, which worked after three days. Has anyone found a better way to challenge these automated takedowns without having to hide your location?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_julia1mo ago

A city council meeting agenda is public record by law, that's the whole point of open meetings. The fact a platform's bot flagged that as private data is honestly scary. You had to spend sixty dollars just to get a real person to look at a public document. That system is so broken it makes me want to scream.

the_riley1mo ago

Yeah, it's wild how these automated systems get it so wrong... I once had a post taken down for sharing a link to my own town's public budget page. The appeal process took weeks, and it just shouldn't be that hard for stuff we have a right to see.

pat_park26d ago

You said "makes me want to scream" and honestly, I gotta ask - is this really worth getting that worked up over? I mean yeah, the bots mess up sometimes, it's annoying for sure. But there's a difference between a glitch and some kind of major conspiracy against public records. Your link probably tripped some vague rule about government sites or something, and the appeal probably took weeks because they get flooded with those requests. It's not like they're sitting there thinking "let's hide the town budget today." Plus sixty bucks to get a real person to look at something? That sounds like a standard fee for any kind of manual review process, not some intentional broken system. I just think people blow this stuff out of proportion sometimes.