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His business is in ‘Facebook jail’. So this Aussie is taking Meta all the way to the Supreme Court

The frustrated Facebook customer has taken matters into his own hands and has slugged Meta with a hefty lawsuit.

Aussie business featured on Shark Tank takes Meta to Supreme Court

Meta nearly wiped out a $12.5 million Aussie company overnight – but now the business is fighting the technology giant and has escalated it all the way to the Supreme Court.

Ming Ye, 30, who runs scooter company Mearth, began a lawsuit against the trillion dollar conglomerate after his company’s Facebook and Instagram business accounts were shut down for no obvious reason.

Mearth sells electric scooters and bikes across Australia, was featured on Shark Tank last year and can be found in major retailers like JB Hi Fi and Bing Lee, after Mr Ye designed the first prototype when he was a university student.

But last year, the business saw its sales dry up drastically because of its social media shut down, while customers and suppliers wrongly believed the business had closed.

In the following year, Mr Ye was forced to lay off most of his staff as his business floundered.

He is unable to start a new Facebook business account, as the Meta algorithm keeps shutting it down, recognising it is part of Mearth in what is known as ‘Facebook jail’. The Instagram page is active but cannot be linked to a business account, and therefore can’t be used to advertise.

“We had no clue at all … they (Meta) never got back to us or the reason they deleted everything,” Mr Ye, a father-of-three from Sydney, lamented.

“We tried to communicate for over six months (but) at the point we had to take legal action.”

Ming Ye has lodged a claim against them in the Supreme Court.
Ming Ye has lodged a claim against them in the Supreme Court.
The Aussie dad has remortgaged his house to keep the business going and as he gears up for a big legal fight.
The Aussie dad has remortgaged his house to keep the business going and as he gears up for a big legal fight.

Mr Ye is demanding Facebook’s parent company immediately reinstate Mearth’s account and pay the scooter maker $1.25 million in damages.

He calculated that is the total loss and wasted expenses his business has incurred.

Since Mearth launched in 2017, it directly spent $174,000 on Facebook and Instagram advertising and a further $720,000 paying someone to manage its social pages.

The entrepreneur claims those expenses were ultimately all for nothing.

He also spent $120,000 on hiring someone to try to mitigate the damage caused by the disablement.

On top of that, he estimates the business has racked up $84,000 in reputational damages.

In a recording he did for the Shark Tank Australia show, just before the Facebook outage hit the business, Mr Ye predicted Mearth was on track to make $5.5 million in revenue.

He had also just signed a deal with DC Comics Warner Brothers to licence the world’s first Batman scooters and was expecting a “strong Christmas”.

But just a month later, he woke up to find Mearth’s business account non-operational.

The Shark Tank judges trying out Mearth scooters.
The Shark Tank judges trying out Mearth scooters.

The Sydney CEO has remortgaged his home in anticipation of the legal fight to come.

Mr Ye began his David and Goliath battle by lodging a claim against Meta in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) earlier this year.

Nobody from Meta attended any of the NCAT hearings and the tribunal member eventually referred the case to the District Court.

There, the court gave Mr Ye approval to issue Meta with his statement of claim and he soon served Meta by sending a letter to their Irish headquarters.

In it, Mr Ye’s business demands that its social accounts be reinstated as well as $1.25 million be paid in damages.

But again at every hearing in the District Court, nobody from Meta appeared.

However, as the case was nearing an end, five besuited lawyers showed up to court. They were representing Meta.

At first Mr Ye was hopeful, thinking that perhaps there might be some mediation between the parties and he might get his account reinstated.

Instead, they argued that the District Court did not have authority to handle the case because Facebook was registered in Ireland.

Mr Ye’s case is now set to go to the Supreme Court in January next year.

For Mr Ye, he said the impact on his business has been catastrophic.

He designed the first Mearth scooter prototype when he was a 23-year-old engineering student at the University of Sydney after realising how hard it was to get around.

The business had been on an upwards trajectory and at the time Mearth appeared on Shark Tank, it valued itself at around $12.5 million.

At the company’s peak in 2023, Mr Ye had 25 people working under him.

However, that’s dropped down to nine employees

“We had to cut almost the entire marketing team,” Mr Ye said. “Those platforms are our primary source of income.”

News.com.au has reported on dozens of cases where Aussie individuals or businesses have suddenly lost control of their Meta accounts. Many have been unable to ever get their accounts back.

Some were hacked and others were shut down for no apparent reason.

Meta at first reinstated people’s accounts when news.com.au reported on these cases, but has since stopped responding to media inquiries.

Last year, a US man successfully sued Facebook for banning his account for no reason and won a $US50,000 ($AUD77,000) payout.

And Aussie billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forest is suing Meta in California for allowing third party deep fake advertisements on its platform.

Meta did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au

Originally published as His business is in ‘Facebook jail’. So this Aussie is taking Meta all the way to the Supreme Court

Original URL: https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/business/work/leaders/his-business-is-in-facebook-jail-so-this-aussie-is-taking-meta-all-the-way-to-the-supreme-court/news-story/8d08726e898e3dd81f09ab6087684670