According to TechCrunch, Meta announced on Thursday it’s launching a new centralized support hub for Facebook and Instagram users globally, rolling out now on iOS and Android. The company admitted its prior support options haven’t “always met expectations.” The hub includes tools for reporting issues, recovering lost accounts, and getting answers via AI-powered search and a new AI assistant. This AI assistant, first for Facebook users, is designed to offer personalized help with account recovery and profile management. Meta claims its AI systems have already decreased account hacks by over 30% globally and have sped up appeals when accounts are mistakenly disabled.
The AI support paradox
Here’s the thing. Meta’s announcement feels like it’s trying to put out a fire it started. The company boasts about AI preventing hacks and speeding up appeals. But for a huge number of users, the experience is the exact opposite. People are losing access to their accounts and business Pages because of Meta’s automated systems, often with zero human oversight to correct the error. So now they’re testing an AI assistant to help you fix problems that were probably caused by… AI. It’s a bit of a circle, isn’t it? The situation has gotten so bad that there’s now an entire Reddit forum dedicated to helping people sue Meta over disabled accounts. That tells you everything you need to know about the scale of the frustration.
Promises and practical reality
Meta’s promises for the new hub sound good on paper. Centralized recovery, clearer guidelines, better device recognition, and even a selfie video option for verification. They’re also pushing users toward security tools like two-factor authentication. But let’s be skeptical. Meta has a long, long history of moving the furniture around in its apps. Settings, privacy tools, help menus—they’re constantly relocated, which always leads to user confusion. Now they’re centralizing support? Great. But if they change the location or the flow again in six months, we’re back to square one. The act of “simplifying” often just resets everyone’s muscle memory.
The real test ahead
The core issue isn’t really about where the help button is. It’s about accountability and escalation. If this new AI assistant can’t actually understand a complex, unique problem—which AI still struggles with—does it have a clear, fast path to a human who can? Or does it just give you better-formatted dead ends? Meta’s blog post talks about AI helping avoid mistaken disables, but the thousands of stories online suggest the problem is very much ongoing. This new hub, detailed on their Meta.com technology site, will be judged on one thing: can it actually restore a legitimately locked account for a small business owner in a reasonable time frame? If it can’t, then all the AI in the world is just a fancy facade. Basically, they’ve built the problem. Now we’ll see if they can build the solution.
