Update: Many users have been reporting that their accounts are being reactivated after 24 - 48 hours.

A large number of users across the world have reported that their Facebook accounts have been automatically disabled, affecting their livelihoods and ability to communicate with their friends and families.

In the past 24 hours alone, thousands of users received an email stating that they have "violated" the social media giant's "community standards":

Your Facebook account has been disabled. This is because your account, or activity on it, doesn't follow our Community Standards. If you think we disabled your account by mistake, we can take you through a few steps to request a review. You'll need to complete these steps within 30 days to avoid your account being permanently disabled.

Upon filing an appeal to have their accounts reactivated, they were then prompted with the following message:

"We received your information. Thank you for sending your information. We have fewer people available to review information due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This means we may be unable to review your account. We apologise for any inconvenience."

Since then, many of the affected users have taken the matter to Twitter, using the #facebookdisabledme hashtag to gain the attention of the social media giant's employees.

While several users have managed to get their accounts reinstated, many others are still waiting anxiously.

Most of the users were also reportedly advertisers on Facebook, and had their accounts automatically disabled while using the Ads Manager tool.

This phenomenon is not something new, as many users in the past have reported having their accounts disabled, many failing to have them reinstated.

A new petition was even created by one of the affected users, which has garnered over 500 petition signatures to date.