A number of the most profitable creators on Fb aren't names you'd ever acknowledge. In truth, lots of their pages don't have a face or recognizable persona connected. As an alternative, they run pages devoted to memes, animal movies and sure, AI-generated photographs and movies.
The folks behind these pages are specialists at creating content material that may catch Fb's algorithm and go viral. Profitable pages can generate tens of hundreds of {dollars} a month from efficiency bonuses, revenue-sharing and different monetization applications that pay Fb creators for fashionable content material.
For years, Meta fostered this trade of viral content material on Fb. As the corporate remodeled Fb's primary feed right into a "discovery engine" of really useful posts from random pages and accounts, creators provided a stream of content material crafted for the algorithm. However during the last 12 months, some creators say this dynamic has damaged down. Meta has penalized creators for the exact same content material it as soon as rewarded. Different creators have seen Fb's fee programs break down as a consequence of glitches and different errors.
One creator has grow to be so pissed off, he's filed dozens of lawsuits in small claims courtroom in opposition to Meta during the last 12 months. A few of these lawsuits are associated to lacking funds and account points he's skilled, however he's additionally introduced 23 circumstances associated to different creators' Fb pages. As a number of of these circumstances at the moment are winding their means by small claims courtroom, he hopes his actions will deliver consideration to what he says is a wider breakdown in Meta's relationship with Fb creators.
The circumstances shine a light-weight on how Meta's lack of human-centered customer support can influence creators who depend on the platform. However it additionally affords a glimpse into the risky dynamics of viral Fb content material.
Mel Bouzad is a former photojournalist for Getty Pictures who for the previous eight years has made his residing working fashionable Fb pages with names like "The Meme Bros" and "FunkiestShitEver." He posts memes, journey content material and AI-generated movies. Over time, he's grow to be an skilled at determining what sort of content material is most certainly to rack up views and feedback on Fb.
"It's principally leaping on the traits as they're occurring," he explains. "In the event you can soar on the trending matters proper at first, you then get the momentum, it kicks within the algorithm, and it sends your content material viral. And if one publish goes viral, the algorithm goes to ship the subsequent publish viral, as a result of it thinks the subsequent publish goes to get the identical sort of engagement." He's additionally realized little tips for drawing extra Fb feedback: including a small error in a travel-focused listicle, or asking questions like "what's essentially the most boring state in America?"
He estimates that at their peak, his pages collectively earned between $10,000 to $20,000 a month — primarily from efficiency bonuses and in-stream video adverts — although they generally earned far more than that. Final September, 12 of his pages earned greater than $68,0000 mixed in efficiency bonuses, based on paperwork seen by Engadget.
However final 12 months, 5 of his meme and journey pages have been all of a sudden demonetized. The pages acquired a "monetization coverage violation," a obscure, catch-all time period that may describe many supposed infractions. After some digging, he found they’d been flagged for allegedly working in a rustic ineligible for Meta's monetization applications. "To monetize, it’s essential to reside in an eligible nation the place the product or function is accessible," a discover within the Fb app stated. "You might lose your capability to monetize if you happen to transfer to an ineligible location or if Fb modifications product eligibility." Bouzad, who lives in the USA, assumed it was a misunderstanding and could be a straightforward repair.
However, like so many others, he shortly discovered that getting assist from Meta was removed from simple. "Regardless of 20+ assist tickets and utilizing paid assist, I obtain solely automated replies," he later wrote in his first submitting in small claims courtroom final November.
Bouzad had heard of individuals utilizing small claims courtroom to get Meta's consideration and determined to strive it for himself. "I believed, I'm going to go in and sue for just one web page … one thing small, simply to get within the door [and] converse to any individual." At that time, Meta was withholding $2,498 in funds from the web page referred to as "Man Cave USA," based on courtroom paperwork. He requested Meta pay the excellent stability, together with $409 to cowl courtroom charges and curiosity.
His submitting succeeded in getting a response from Meta. Bouzad stated that about three weeks later he acquired a name from a legislation agency representing the social media firm. After an prolonged backwards and forwards, Meta ultimately restored the web page's capability to earn cash. By February he formally dropped the case, telling the courtroom that the corporate had "corrected the difficulty and remitted the funds owed."
Meta's conflicting explanations
Whereas he was coping with that case, he tried to resolve the problems associated to his different pages. Since he was nonetheless in mediation with Meta for his "Man Cave USA" web page, he requested Meta's representatives if they may assist along with his different pages. He says that in a mediation session over Zoom, Meta's authorized reps informed him they wouldn't assist with different pages until they have been tied to a lawsuit.
So in February he opened six new small claims courtroom circumstances in opposition to the corporate. On the time, he stated, Meta owed him greater than $40,000 in unpaid invoices from accounts that had been wrongfully flagged; $15,000 of which have been earnings from a single Fb web page. As a result of small claims courtroom limits damages to $10,000 per case, he may solely sue for a mixed $35,000, however hoped that Meta would reinstate the funds if it have been to re-examine his accounts.
Within the meantime, Bouzad continued to attempt to resolve his account points by Meta's official assist channels and acquired complicated, and typically downright conflicting, data. In a single e-mail, Meta assist informed him he had been flagged for "restricted originality of content material," however didn't clarify. He additionally, once more, acquired notifications saying that he was in a rustic that was "ineligible" for Meta's monetization applications.
In two separate chats with Meta Verified, the social community's paid subscription service for buyer assist, he was knowledgeable that he was ineligible as a result of his web page was linked to a checking account in Malta. The representatives then closed the chats with out giving him a chance to reply, based on screenshots seen by Engadget. Bouzad was getting increasingly more pissed off. "One, I've by no means been to Malta, two, my financial institution is Wells Fargo and three, I reside in Oregon," he says.
He now sees his points as a part of a wider sample from Meta. Whereas the corporate had as soon as offered him with a companion supervisor — a Fb worker who may assist type out points and supply recommendation — he hasn't had a devoted contact on the firm since 2020.
To him, the issue is twofold: Meta has grow to be overly reliant on synthetic intelligence for content material moderation, which ends up in too many errors. On the identical time, he claims Meta has largely outsourced the customer support it does provide — like by Meta Verified — and these employees aren't capable of deal with the forms of points he and different creators more and more encounter.
Some creators who Bouzad has named in his lawsuits declare to have missed out on tens of hundreds of {dollars} in funds for what they describe as glitches in Meta's processes. Brent, a creator who requested to be recognized by his first identify solely, was working a profitable Fb web page that posts history-themed AI-generated movies. One current clip incorporates a group of supposed German prisoners-of-war strolling by the snow, accompanied by a caption claiming that some POWs selected to immigrate to Canada following the conflict after experiencing "humane therapy" from their captors.
The web page was doing nicely for just a few months till April, when Meta requested Brent to confirm his id so as to maintain receiving funds. His account had greater than $11,000 in unpaid earnings on the time, based on paperwork reviewed by Engadget.
A number of months later, Brent has been unable to finish this seemingly mundane step, regardless of repeatedly offering Meta a replica of his ID. Brent says that the difficulty stems from Meta mistakenly classifying his payout account as a "non-public company" slightly than a "private account." He says he has spent hundreds of {dollars} on Meta Verified (the best tier prices $500 a month) and has opened quite a few assist circumstances however has not been capable of get the difficulty resolved.
One other creator is caught after encountering an analogous challenge that prevented him from confirming the tax data related along with his payout account on Fb. "My payout earnings have been locked as a consequence of non editable 'greyed out' particulars when it got here to coming into tax data and different fields," the creator defined. "After a few 12 months of attempting to get assist Meta lastly got here again with an archaic type to switch the payout account to a brand new one related to my web page." However, after filling out the shape for the switch, Meta knowledgeable him that the greater than $16,000 in unpaid earnings from his web page have been unable to be transferred to a brand new account.
The creator, who requested to stay nameless, has spent greater than a decade working music-related pages championing unbiased artists on the platform. "We're collectively sick of how Meta treats everybody, failing to offer satisfactory assist, reasoning, experiences and outcomes for content material creators," he informed Engadget. "There's little to no consistency or confidence of their capability to pretty reward creators." He's additionally battling stage 4 most cancers, and says the lacking funds have interfered along with his therapy, and added to the stress he's already going through. His docs just lately knowledgeable him he probably has just a few months left to reside; he's nonetheless hoping to get better the lacking funds.
Gaps in assist
Social media is full of quite a few complaints concerning the ineffectiveness of Fb's assist instruments, together with Meta Verified. Daniel Abas, the president and founding father of the Creators Guild of America, a nonprofit group that advocates for creators, says that demonetization is a "persistent challenge" affecting creators on many platforms, together with Meta's. "What's actually troublesome is just not having consistency by way of the enforcement and having insurance policies which are opaque, having appeals processes which are inconsistent," he stated.
Abas says that creators, particularly high-earning ones, ought to have extra assets to get assist from corporations like Meta. "Working with an online chat to get one thing resolved, or submitting an e-mail to get one thing resolved, and never having that human contact is a significant hole, and contributes to a variety of stress and a variety of uncertainty whenever you're attempting to construct an organization."
Meta has seemingly been altering among the requirements it has for creators on Fb during the last 12 months. The corporate in current months started to crack down on creators sharing spammy and "low high quality" content material, although it solely described just a few particular examples of such exercise, like pages that share posts with "lengthy, distracting captions." The corporate doesn’t prohibit creators from monetizing AI-generated content material. In truth, Mark Zuckerberg just lately stated that Meta plans so as to add a "enormous corpus" of AI content material to its programs.
Meta declined to offer a remark for this story. The corporate maintains Bouzad has violated its insurance policies, and has argued his courtroom circumstances involving different Fb customers ought to be dismissed.
Bouzad insists that he has by no means deliberately violated Fb's guidelines, and has grown pissed off with the corporate's altering explanations for why his pages have been demonetized. In an e-mail with Meta Verified assist, a customer support rep informed him a current violation for certainly one of his journey pages was as a consequence of "Restricted Originality of Contents," however didn't level to a selected publish. Throughout mediation, although, Meta's authorized staff claimed the identical web page had been producing views by way of "inauthentic engagement," based on paperwork reviewed by Engadget. Bouzad pushed again. "This wasn’t manipulation — it was performance-based publicity … we’re being punished for the very habits the system rewarded," he wrote in an e-mail to Meta's authorized staff.
In paperwork reviewed by Engadget, Meta doesn't clarify its allegation of inauthentic engagement. However the firm did inform Bouzad it could be keen to pay him $5,000 — a fraction of what he claims to be owed — to settle the circumstances although it was standing by its choice to demonetize his pages. Bouzad declined. He believes that Meta is unfairly focusing on him and different creators who run high-earning Fb pages.
Bouzad says he's heard numerous tales from different creators who’ve additionally been hit with obscure "monetization web page violations" which have stalled their funds. Very like he skilled, these account flags don't describe the supposed infraction and don't give a chance for an attraction. This, he says, leaves creators with few choices exterior of the authorized system.
An uncommon authorized maneuver
After submitting his second batch of small claims courtroom circumstances in February, he started to succeed in out to his community and began submitting extra circumstances. Bouzad is just not a lawyer and has no authorized coaching; he's relied on ChatGPT and Gemini to information his authorized technique. A lot of that technique depends on exhibiting that different creators have allowed him to sue on their behalf by a course of generally known as an task of claims. He filed 25 such circumstances in 2025.
Changing into a authorized assignee is at greatest an uncommon transfer for small claims courtroom. A number of authorized specialists contacted by Engadget stated they’d by no means heard of anybody doing so. "Usually, I don't assume you see assigned claims in small claims [court]," Richard Slottee, a retired Oregon-based legal professional, who has beforehand suggested shoppers on small claims courtroom circumstances. He stated he was not sure of the legality of the transfer.
Marion County Circuit Courtroom Choose Lindsay Partridge, who’s presiding over Bouzad's small claims courtroom case, appears equally perplexed by the difficulty. In an October 23 listening to, he stated that "there are some sort of claims that below Oregon legislation, an anti-assignment clause wouldn’t be enforceable" however that he was not sure if the statute would apply on this specific case. "I attempted to do a bunch of analysis on this," he stated "I simply can't discover a solution to it."
Meta, however, has argued that its phrases of service clearly prohibit customers from transferring their rights to different events with out its consent. "Based mostly on the No Switch Clause, this Courtroom shouldn’t allow Mr. Bouzad to proceed recruiting Fb customers from all around the world and flooding its docket with circumstances the place he claims standing primarily based on an invalid task," a Meta venture supervisor wrote in a letter to the choose. Throughout the listening to, Choose Partridge stated he was "involved" that "what I’ve is basically a really technical authorized challenge that's being offered by two non-attorneys." He stated he would want "a little bit bit extra time" to decide on whether or not Bouzad may transfer ahead as an assignee.
The group Bouzad helps consists primarily of colleagues, buddies and friends-of-friends who had heard about his small claims circumstances. And although just a few of the people are folks he's partnered with up to now, he says he has no monetary stake within the success of their pages. "It's energy in numbers, we felt the extra folks, the extra noise we may make, the higher the probabilities of getting points resolved," Bouzad says. "They gave me their circumstances to try to get that assist [to] power Fb to repair their pages." However there's additionally a doubtlessly profitable payday for him if he succeeds. As an assignee, he has the only real proper to gather any judgment that in the end comes out of the opposite creator's claims.
This Courtroom shouldn’t allow Mr. Bouzad to proceed recruiting Fb customers from all around the world and flooding its docket with circumstances the place he claims standing primarily based on an invalid task.A Meta venture supervisor who’s representing the corporate in small claims courtroom
For among the creators concerned, the quantity at stake is way larger than what Bouzad has claimed in his flings. One UK-based creator who has assigned their declare to Bouzad runs a dog-themed Fb web page that generated greater than $60,000 from in-stream video adverts throughout a one-month interval final 12 months, based on paperwork seen by Engadget. Like Bouzad, their web page was hit with an unexplained "MPV" violation that has affected their attain. "On account of its authentic content material and area of interest viewers, the Fb algorithm commonly rewards it with excessive attain and frequent placement within the suggestion feed," Bouzad wrote in a small claims courtroom submitting that claimed $1,000 in damages. "This pure visibility has now been unfairly disabled by Meta."
One other creator, who requested to not be recognized out of concern of retaliation from Meta, requested him to look into three of his Fb pages, which collectively have greater than 1.5 million followers. All three had been demonetized by Meta and, like Bouzad, the creator acquired conflicting explanations about why.
He was informed two of the pages have been flagged for "restricted originality" although he informed Engadget he solely posts movies which are scripted and filmed by him and his enterprise companions. His pages are devoted to scripted sketches filmed to seem like real-life encounters. They usually present folks in seemingly mundane conditions turning into inexplicably offended, with descriptions like "Instructor Karen Calls for to Know Why I’m Choosing Up My Child," or "I Gave Sweet to Children and Apparently That’s 'Unsuitable' Now."
The third web page was hit with a "monetization web page violation" for residing in an "ineligible nation," even supposing, based on the creator, it was managed from the USA and the EU, each of that are eligible to take part in Meta's applications. Engadget has additionally verified the web page supervisor places utilizing Fb's web page transparency data.
Bouzad filed two small claims courtroom circumstances associated to those three pages. The 2 that had been flagged for restricted originality ultimately had their monetization restored and the case was dismissed. "I believe Mel's serving to immensely," he informed Engadget. "The truth that he obtained us the 2 pages again helped us as a enterprise so much."
The second case, associated to the web page with the "MPV" flag, continues to be pending. The creator, who has labored with Bouzad up to now, says he's grateful for the authorized assist, however more and more pissed off with Meta. The demonetized web page was his highest-earning web page, making between $3,000 – $5,000 a month from video adverts on Fb, based on paperwork filed as a part of the small claims lawsuit. He doesn't perceive why Meta continues to penalize it when the web page posts comparable content material as his different accounts. "We've all the time been following the foundations, as a result of that is our enterprise, it's how we pay the payments," he says. However, he says that Fb's continued errors has made it "extraordinarily troublesome" to keep up a enterprise as a creator.
What's subsequent
Of the 32 circumstances Bouzad has filed, eight have been resolved after Meta addressed the underlying challenge. 9 circumstances have been dismissed by Bouzad because the creators selected to pursue authorized motion in different states. Fifteen circumstances, together with six associated to Bouzad's personal pages, are nonetheless open. In July, a choose consolidated Bouzad's remaining circumstances right into a single declare, regardless of a movement from Bouzad to maintain the circumstances separate. "The circumstances affected by this order contain similar events, elevate considerably comparable claims, and collectively search damages that exceed the jurisdictional limits of the small claims courtroom," a choose wrote. Bouzad is at present looking for greater than $115,0000 in damages, $35,000 of that are from his personal pages, over unpaid invoices, submitting charges and different bills associated to his months-long battle over Fb's monetization practices.
In response to Bouzad, the precise quantity owed to him and the opposite creators is way larger. "Precise unpaid earnings exceed $220,000," he wrote in a submitting, "however quantities have been capped in accordance with small claims jurisdictional limits."
For now, Bouzad's claims can't transfer ahead till the choose guidelines on whether or not Bouzad can proceed as an assignee. If the choose decides in his favor, he’ll be capable of make his arguments to the circuit courtroom choose overseeing the case. If the choose guidelines in Meta's favor, he’ll solely be capable of transfer ahead with the claims pertaining to his personal Fb pages.
Bouzad says he’s ready for the battle. He has painstakingly compiled greater than 1,000 pages of courtroom paperwork, screenshots and information clippings for his case. In his submitting, he alleges Meta is in breach of contract over the lacking funds. He says Meta has persistently flagged creators' accounts with obscure "MPV" violations, made enforcement errors, delayed funds and ignored appeals. He acknowledges that his months-long authorized battle, and his decreased earnings, have taken a toll on his private life. "Taking up Fb, it's not such as you're suing a mother and pop store," he says. "You're suing one of many largest companies on this planet, and it has brought on a variety of stress."
His aim continues to be to get the monetization restrictions lifted from the Fb pages and for Meta to renew its funds to him and the opposite creators. "I simply need the pages fastened and the cash paid that's owed," he stated. He has a whole lot of journey movies saved and able to publish on his Fb pages if and when his monetization is restored.
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