What happens when you lose your social media?

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1:27stories that we've got to share with you. This week, we'll be hearing from the people who say they've been banned from Facebook and Instagram for no good reason. Intel was one of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley. But in recent years, it's really struggled to keep up with its rivals. We'll have the rise and fall of the American chip maker. And we'll hear from a best selling author and why she thinks the best way to describe the AI world is by comparing it to an empire.

2:14We're starting this programme this week with Meta, the tech giant that owns Facebook and Instagram. It's been accused of wrongly banning people's accounts without good reasons. In the past few months, BBC News has been contacted by hundreds of you whose accounts have been banned or suspended with no ability to get them back or to speak to anyone at Meta to help. Many of them have told us that they've lost their means of communication, they've had their businesses impacted, or just lost years' worth of photos and memories. Tech Life's Graeme Fraser has been working on this story for a while now.

2:46How did you first hear about so many people getting banned? Well, people started to write to us about June time and they were telling us about how they had their Instagram accounts banned, how their Facebook accounts banned. And we became aware of a petition that was started by a young woman in Canada called Brittany Watson. And this petition was starting to gather a number of signatures of people who were saying that AI was at the heart of a wrongful ban wave. Not only was AI being blamed for wrongly banning accounts, but it was also being blamed for an appeal process that wasn't fit for purpose.

3:22So people were getting banned and then they had no real way to get unbanned. How did you deal with what sounds like perhaps desperation from people who had been banned from Instagram and Facebook? Yes, it was very difficult. The BBC has received over 500 emails and messages from people who've been directly affected by this. And they were reaching out because they were desperate, because they tried to speak to meta and couldn't. They couldn't get through to a human. and when they did get through to a human then they were struggling to get any answers or being able to progress their case. So they found the BBC was, as one of the only media organisations that was reporting this, they found us as an outlet to basically beg us to try and get their account back.

4:09And obviously it's very difficult to read of the impact it's had on people, on their mental health, some people talking about the financial impact it's had on their businesses. and it's very difficult to read all these stories and the huge impact it's had on people and their personal lives. And what were the people telling you? These people roughly fall into three categories. The first would be people who are very upset because they're losing family pictures and memories that they have on their accounts. A second group would be people who run their businesses on Instagram in particular and they're losing out financially because of having their accounts taken away from them.

4:49And the third group would be people who've been accused of child sexual exploitation. Obviously that's a very, very serious thing to be accused of. So I've spoken to a number of people who've been accused by Meta of breaking the policy on child sexual exploitation and they all deny that they've done anything wrong. They can't understand why they've been banned. They have been searching for answers. they can't even search their own accounts because after they get banned then there's no access to their messages or or what they engaged with so they've been thinking about what they did but they all insist that they did absolutely nothing wrong and a number of case studies who I spoke to when we put their cases to Meta were immediately unbanned.

5:34One of the people who wrote to us was a gentleman called David who is from Aberdeen in Scotland that's not his real name now he was suspended from Instagram on the 4th of June after he was told by email that he had not followed Meta's community standards on child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity. Now he appealed that day and then he was permanently disabled on Instagram and his associated Facebook. Now his words are read out by a BBC journalist. We've lost years of memories, in my case over 10 years of messages, photos and posts due to a completely outrageous and vile accusation. I've lost endless hours of sleep, extreme stress, felt isolated.

6:17It's been horrible, not to mention having an accusation like that over my head. Although you can speak to people on Reddit, it is hard to go and speak to a family member or a colleague. They probably don't know the context that there's a ban wave going on. Now a month after he was banned, the BBC put David's case to Meta as one of a number of people who claimed that he'd been wrongly banned over child sexual exploitation. And within hours of me writing to Meta's press office, his account was simply reinstated. He received a generic email from Meta and it just said, we're sorry we got this wrong.

6:55So Graham, that's one of the categories that you mentioned, child sexual exploitation, but that's not the whole story is it because Facebook and Instagram are a lifeline for some people. Absolutely it is a lifeline for people and one person who contacted me was a gentleman called Duncan Edmundston. He's a 55 year old who's from Cheshire in England and he has stage 4 lung cancer. It's quite a rare form of cancer it's called ALK plus and he was banned from Facebook for 12 days at the end of June for apparently breaching rules on cyber security and then it was reinstated. There are people in there who rely on these groups for advice, support, empathy, sympathy, kindness.

7:37So when that is taken away, it's taken almost like taking a lifeline away. I get a lot of joy and value and purpose in my life from helping other people in that group deal with their challenges around their cancer treatment and being unable to do that is really frustrating. So what has Meta said, Graeme? Well, Meta has said very little. We've been writing stories about this since June and they haven't actually given us any statement at all since our first piece that was at the end of June. Now, at that time, they said that they acknowledged that there was a problem with the Facebook groups. they acknowledged a technical error, but they never explained what that was.

8:24And they said that there was no evidence of a significant increase in enforcement of its rules in the platforms more widely. And they said at that time that they take action on accounts that violate our policies and people can appeal if they think they've made a mistake. And Meta also at that point said it uses a combination of people and technology to find and remove accounts that broke its rules and that they share data about these actions in its transparency reports. But since June, they've said nothing, and that includes nothing to the many people who we have contacted Meta about. Dr. Carolina Ora, she is a social media researcher at Northumbria University's Centre for Digital Citizens in England, and has studied Meta for years.

9:07Now, she told me it was hard to know what the root of the problem was because Meta was not being open about it. We'll continue facing an incredibly shaky scenario in this field until governments worldwide start acting collectively to make sure that platforms are transparent and that the reins of digital civil society are not in the hands of a handful of tech bros. So fundamentally, Graeme, no real resolution then for people who are still banned? No, there has been no real resolution. And I think for the people that I've spoken to, they continue to face difficulties because for the people banned, there has been no answers.

9:55To take David's case, as we were talking about earlier, he was accused of child sexual exploitation. He was banned immediately after he appealed. He then spent a month trying to speak to someone at Meta about it. And this is one of the accusations that it's very difficult to speak to a human. he contacts the media, in this case the BBC the BBC put his case to the press office and within five hours he has his account back and he's never been told why none of these people who've had their accounts reinstated have never been told why they were banned and they've never been told why they were unbanned they just received a generic email from Instagram saying sorry we got this wrong Really interesting reporting, thank you so much that was Tech Life's Graeme Fraser This advertisement feature is paid and presented by Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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11:14Right, time for your tech mini-adventures. If you've been listening for the last few weeks, we've been hearing about your experiences with tech, the good and the bad. And this one is from regular listener Tony, who works at a university in Kenya. And Tony, it is quite the adventure. Tony says part of the campus went offline and they traced it to a disrupted fibre cable. What they found out was that there was a swarm of bees there that had nested in a nearby manhole. But it wasn't the bees that damaged the cable, it was some of the staff who had lit a fire to drive them out and it was the fire that caused the problems.

11:47No wonder. Luckily, Tony says his team worked swiftly and repaired it. It does sound a bit stressful though. Well, thanks, Tony, for your mini-adventure and I think it's just a reminder that despite all the amazing tech advances of the internet, much of it still relies on physical infrastructure, like fibre optic cables in the ground. Have you had your own mini-adventure with tech? Get in touch with us by emailing techlife at bbc.co.uk or you can WhatsApp us on plus 44 330 1230 320.

12:27For decades, it was one of the most important companies on the planet.

12:44Intel's chips powered millions of computers around the world. We use an industry standard chip from Intel and an operating system from Microsoft. And it's around that, the architecture of all these major personal computers is built around those two things, the chip and the operating system. By the 1990s, it dominated Silicon Valley. The biggest chip maker in the world is Intel in Silicon Valley. The boss is something of a guru figure in the States. And for many people, it was known by this sound.

13:19Fast forward to now and Intel is struggling. It's on track to slash 15 % of its workforce and has fallen way behind rival chip makers such as NVIDIA, which is now about 40 times more valuable. The company has missed the smartphone boom and has also failed to capitalise on AI chips race. So its rivals, for example, NVIDIA and AMD are miles ahead. Recently, the US government announced it would take a 10 % stake in the company. So what does that mean for Intel? I spoke to our North America technology correspondent, Lily Jamali.

13:55Hi, Lily. Hi. So you've been visiting the Intel headquarters down in Silicon Valley. What was it like there? Well, it was a little bit quiet. This is a campus that has seen a number of layoffs. Hundreds of people have actually lost their jobs on that campus in recent weeks. I was also struck by the fact that Intel has a museum on its campus. I had not seen that elsewhere in Silicon Valley. This place is full of company memorabilia, explainers on how Intel helped spark the personal computing era with these revolutionary microprocessors that they developed. And I think the fact that there's a museum there speaks to just how iconic Intel has long been in Silicon Valley.

14:42This was a super powerful company. Here's historian David Brock, who wrote a book about Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel. Of course, it was a huge industrial manufacturing company. So it had to have that sort of industrial discipline to be able to make these things that are some of the most complex devices humanity has ever created. So it's no small feat to do this work and to actually deliver stuff to customers on time that worked. But Intel has fallen well behind its rivals like NVIDIA and AMD, as well as TSMC, and it just has not been able to break out of this rut. And so the U.S.

15:27government taking a stake in the company, is this an unusual step? It is considered somewhat unusual. The U.S. government is going to invest around$9 billion in Intel. That money was already supposed to go to Intel, but originally was supposed to come in the form of grants from this thing called the CHIPS Act. This was enacted under Joe Biden, former president before Donald Trump. That money had been awarded to Intel, but had not yet been paid. And it was all in service of trying to get manufacturing going in the U.S. Now the U.S. government is taking a 10 percent stake in exchange for that money.

16:08That means Intel is giving something up. Shareholders are going to see their shares diluted. So to your question about is this unusual, we have seen this before during the great financial crisis in 2008. The U.S. took a 60 % stake in General Motors, the automaker. They ended up selling those shares off at a$10 billion loss. So it doesn't always work in the favor of taxpayers, but this has been tried before. So it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I mean, President Trump's been quite vocal about Intel in recent weeks, hasn't he? They've had some bad management over the years and they got lost.

16:46And I said, I think you should pay us 10 % of your company. And they said, yes, that's about$10 billion. I don't get it. This comes to the United States of America. What's been motivating that? Well, it started with U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican, writing to Intel's board, questioning Intel CEO Lip Boutan's ties to China. President Trump heard about this and then fired off an attack on the CEO on his own social media platform. He called Tan highly conflicted. Mr. Tan then scrambled to defend himself, calling the accusations misinformation. And he ended up in a meeting with Trump shortly thereafter.

17:28Just weeks later, he's agreed to this deal with the president. He's probably going to be pretty vocal about what the company does, whether the CEO likes it or not. And how's the deal being perceived? I've been hearing mixed reviews. Some are likening it to a shakedown of sorts. Remember, the Trump administration recently ordered NVIDIA and AMD, both American chipmakers that compete with Intel, to give the government a 15 percent cut of revenue from AI chip sales to China. Others I've been talking to say this will give Intel a much needed cash infusion. They desperately need the help at the moment.

18:09So this is good. Again, Intel was already on track to receive this money. But before, there were strings attached, things that Intel had to do. Now, the U.S. government and the American taxpayer are kind of partners. I spoke with Jacob Feldgoist at Georgetown University, who said both approaches are pretty interventionist, but have the same goal in mind. The equity stake versus the previous approach of the CHIPS Act, it's still in service of the same overall objective, which is taking a more direct role in private markets to advance US economic and national security objectives, particularly around maintaining US technological leadership or really regaining it when it comes to semiconductor manufacturing.

18:56And I guess ultimately, we wouldn't want innovation to be the thing that was stifled as a result of that. That's absolutely right. This is a company that once very much prided itself on innovation. The historian I spoke to, David Brock, talked about how executives there used to liken the approach to being on a treadmill, that you had to constantly be running and running to outpace your competition. They haven't been able to do that in recent years. That's why Nvidia is now a$4 trillion company while Intel is a$100 billion company. But I think the goal is to get back on that treadmill and see if they can innovate their way out of the situation that they find themselves in today.

19:44Well, keep a watchful eye. Thank you to our North America technology correspondent, Lily Jamali. Thank you.

19:57now to turn to a subject that we cover most weeks here on tech life artificial intelligence and this week who is in charge of it because it's really run by a very small number of tech bosses mostly base in the u.s can we really trust them with the future of this very powerful tech well one best-selling author doesn't think so. Karen Howe is the author of Empire of AI, and she was talking to TechLife's Imran Raman-Jones. For years, Karen Howe has been reporting on AI companies such as OpenAI, Google and Meta, mostly from the US. But she's also extensively covered AI's impacts on people all around the world.

20:38And it was this reporting which led her to compare AI companies to an empire. I came across scholarship that was coming out of the UK actually that was drawing parallels between the AI industry then and colonialism. So they were looking at things like the labour exploitation that happens in the industry, the resource extraction that happens where the industry will just take a lot of people's data and not pay for it, not ask for consent and just say that it's theirs the same way that empires of old would grab land and grab resources without consent and say that it was theirs. An example of this resource extraction in the book comes from South America.

21:19So in both Chile and Uruguay, like in many parts of the world, they were facing a historic level of drought. And in Uruguay, the drought became so bad that the Montevideo government was actually mixing salt water into the public drinking water supply because they just wanted something to be able to come out of people's taps. And for people that didn't have enough money to buy bottled water, that was the water that they were drinking. And women were having higher rates of miscarriages because of this. The elderly were having much worse chronic illnesses. Their chronic illnesses were being inflamed from drinking this contaminated water.

22:02And it was in the middle of that that Google proposed to build a data center and use the fresh water, the already limited fresh water, to cool their facilities. And the reason why these data centres need fresh water is because if you use something like salt water, it actually corrodes the equipment, it can lead to bacterial growth. And so there are literally communities around the world that are competing with this AI infrastructure for life-sustaining resources. At the time, Google said sustainability was at the heart of everything they do. and was actively working with the support of national and local authorities in Uruguay.

22:43And of course, many AI companies say the use of resources now to train AI models could lead to saving resources in the future, as AI could help scientific research on sustainability. They also make similar arguments for things like advances in the agricultural sector and in healthcare. But Karen Howe has a different opinion. What they're saying that scale is necessary, that is actually a fallacy. So there are many different types of AI. You can have really resource-intensive AI technologies, but there are other types of AI technologies where they are small models, task-specific. They're trained on curated data sets like AI and healthcare for detecting certain types of cancer.

23:31They're not being trained on the whole internet. They're being trained on highly curated data sets of different types of medical images, MRI scans. And because they are much smaller data sets, they do not need a huge amount of resources. They don't need massive data centers to train these systems. Sometimes these AI tools can actually be trained on just a powerful laptop and then have huge benefits to people around the world. And so this is where you can see like different AI technologies can have totally different cost benefit tradeoffs. And the benefits I see are from the types of AI technologies where it is not that cost intensive to develop.

24:14It is small, task-specific, focused on a particular problem that is conducive to the strengths of AI, the computational strengths of it, and ultimately brings wide, broadly distributed benefit to many people. Is that happening? Is anyone listening? Are the big tech companies showing any signs of doing that? There are plenty of different organizations and groups that have developed these types of AI systems for a very, very long time. They predate ChatGPT and some of the AI for cancer detection tools have been deployed in hospitals and are actively being used by doctors. But the problem is that the amount of resources now being poured into the development of generative AI systems and these chatbot systems has completely sucked a lot of the energy out of the room.

25:09So we sort of have a resource allocation issue here where we're misallocating a lot of the resources towards an AI technology that is maybe beneficial for some people and hugely costly for a lot of people. And we should be redirecting it to the types of AI tools that are very minimally costly and actually beneficial for everyone. You do speak to people in the book who are trying to make changes and grassroots campaigns. Where do you see that there might be a change for what you would see as positive? One of the things I was most heartened by when I was reporting the book is the communities that I thought were the ones who had the least amount of agency were actually the ones who remembered that they had agency at all.

26:00So the activists that I met in Chile that were fighting against the same kind of extraction that was happening in Uruguay, they were so spirited about continuing to assert ownership over their fresh water and not allowing companies to just take it without any kind of compensation or consent from the community. and because they pushed back so intensely, you know, they were in the streets, they were handing out flyers to all of their neighbors, they were knocking on everyone's doors, they were escalating to city council. Because they made such a ruckus, they actually got the attention of the tech companies themselves as well as the national Chilean government.

26:43And now the Chilean government has a roundtable where they actually bring together communities, community residents and tech companies to discuss data center projects. That is an active part of their governing efforts now. And so they showed me every single person in this world, wherever you sit, actually has a very active role in shaping the trajectory of technology development to bend it more towards what will be beneficial, broadly beneficial for the most of us. if everyone does that, tech companies will have to respond. That was Karen Howe talking to Imran Raman-Jones.