A White Plains lawyer just wants to talk with a real person at the social media colossus Meta.
Jordan El-Hag claims that Meta Platforms Inc. has failed to restore access to his business and advertising accounts for more than a year, in a complaint filed on Nov. 3 in U.S. District Court in White Plains.
“Meta provided only automated responses,” the complaint states, “and no human review.”
El-Hag, of Danbury, Connecticut, has practiced law in New York since 2012, and his firm, El-Hag & Associates P.C., of White Plains, specializes in worker issues such as unpaid wages and union collective bargaining.
Meta, based in Menlo Park, California, offers free tools that enable small businesses to connect with customers through Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
According to El-Hag, Meta business accounts have to be linked to a personal Facebook account to prevent fraud. But in July 2024, Facebook suspended his personal account because of suspicious activity.
Meta instructed him to verify his identity by submitting images of government identifications to an artificial intelligence platform. But the AI platform would not accept the images, according to the complaint, and Meta support specialists told him they could not override the system.
El-Hag says he has been frozen out of his personal account, “through which all of the business assets are owned and managed.”
And without access to his accounts, he cannot control business assets or protect himself from outsiders gaining access to his assets.
He is asking the court to declare him as the rightful owner of the business accounts; direct Meta to conduct a human review to verify his ownership; restore access; prevent unauthorized use of credit cards linked to the accounts; and account for activities while he was locked out.
Meta did not reply to an email asking for its responses to the allegations.
