NORTH PROVIDENCE – As of Wednesday morning, Yacht Club Soda’s Facebook page has seen all restrictions lifted and its checkmark is in place.
Owner John Sgambato said they haven’t had any communication with humans yet, but he’s assuming someone with Meta saw the widespread support and news coverage for the company on Tuesday and finally took action.
“Our reach is not being restricted anymore,” he said.
The owner noted that he posted just a picture of a bottle on Tuesday to see if it would trigger a new AI action, but so far, all is good.
Our original story:
Yacht Club: Hey Meta, it’s soda
NORTH PROVIDENCE – Proving again that AI can often be more of a curse than a blessing, an automated system from Meta/Facebook has been repeatedly and falsely flagging glass bottles from Yacht Club soda as alcohol.
Owner John Sgambato says the North Providence-based company (Centredale) has been on restricted mode for the last two months. He said they’ve spent eight exhausting weeks going in circles with Meta’s AI chatbot, “which either can’t or won’t escalate our case to a human who can help.”
Every time their page gets a manual review, he said, they’re cleared. Then the automated system immediately flags their bottles as inappropriate again, and the restrictions come right back.
Meta has told them its system can mistake Yacht Club’s glass soda bottles for alcohol, he added.
“There is nothing inappropriate or offensive about a bottle of Yacht Club Soda. Yet we’re stuck in this cycle with no lasting resolution,” he said.
Yacht Club Soda, established in 1915, is a family business making soda and trying to connect with customers, he emphasized. They’ve now exhausted the support options available to them.
They’re asking people to publicly share about the situation to hopefully get Meta’s attention to step in and fix the false flagging.
