Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaways885 | Hacker News Reader

Facebook bans accounts fairly regularly for hate speech, which pretty much means whatever they want. It seems ludicrous to me that an edgy teenager can have their headset bricked because they posted some spicy political memes.

View on HN

If only the reason was hate speech!

This also happened to me, had an account 5 years ago, stopped using it, deleted the account on their website. Last week decided to create it again to prepare to eventually link to Oculus.. Instantly banned. Literally on the "Confirm Your Email" page got redirected to violated the community guidelines. And I'm not even from the US..

There are similar stories on reddit, with people speculating that the old account actually still existed and the ban was because the new account was imitating an existing account. The idea that they would keep a "deleted" account around seems highly plausible given Facebook's hunger for data.

As far as I understand it, there's three account states you can be in:

- Active = Normal - Deactivated = Deactivated/Not In-Use/Asked to deactivate - Deleted = After asking for deletion, wait (don't log in) for a period of 60? days and your account is deleted.

In my particular scenario, I downloaded my data, went through deletion, waited the period and then confirmed the account was deleted (5y ago).

Unless recently changed, I know my father temporarily re-enabled his Facebook account that had been deactivated for years prior

Deactivation is what Facebook directs everybody to, but there is actually a way to completely delete an account too. With an actually deleted account, you have to create a new one, there isn't a reactivation option.

Given that Facebook creates shadow profiles for "users" who have never had a Facebook account, I wonder what "deleted" really means in terms of Facebook's social graph. Is your identity back to being treated as a shadow profile or is there now an empty hole in the graph?

I filed a GDPR deletion request after it went in to effect. I wonder if such a shadow profile would even be allowed under it.

It sometimes happens if you create account from a suspicious IP address, such as VPN or shared computer at school or cafe. They are trying to prevent account takeovers and fake accounts when some dormant users left weak passwords and got in a leak somewhere. But Facebook is also sometimes a bit too proactive in banning new accounts, because they use this as an opportunity to extract more information from you - you can only unban the account by providing phone number, scan of your ID card etc.. That suits them so they like banning more.

> And I'm not even from the US..

Accessing Facebook from outside the US is likely, through a combination of bad signals, why you tripped the ban hammer. Unfortunately.

The majority of Facebook users access it from outside the US.

That doesn’t preclude them from using it as one factor in their abuse detection models.

Whether it’s a good idea or not, geolocation is a common factor that these models take into account.

I think it's good to add to the discussion here for other HN readers that the reason I mentioned it was that some people are suggesting this is a measure put in-place by facebook to reduce election interference (as it's happening right now in the US). That may be the case, it may also not be since everyone (doesn't matter where from) seems to be getting banned alike.

This is not about hate speech... Creating new accounts with Facebook often leads to instaban.

Facebook, their "real name" policy, and their ban policy when combined with hardware like Oculus seem like a series of really bad product decisions. Like with combining messengers between Instagram and Facebook, the business reason is probably to make Oculus harder to split off in the event of anti-trust action. Pretty gross.

I recently discovered a similar thing with Twitter: when you sign up with e-mail, they block your account and will unblock it only if you give them your phone number.

You mean the same Twitter that was leaking people's phone numbers earlier this year?

Get a VoIP number solely for using as a social media platform validator. Never use your actual mobile number

Google banned one of my accounts after 6 months - most likely reason (with Google no support you could ask) was not using my real phone number...

Lost access to all info within the account, and other things also. Why not just prevent signup in the first place?!?!

How is it not your real phone number? I currently have no cell service on a device. It only uses WiFi. I have a VoIP app on it. People use it, it rings my phone, I answer it.

People's definition of "real" is so arbitrary in a way that suits them, but it's no less correct than the answer I provide.

Statistical models that say "most accounts we don't ban have these characteristics; most accounts we ban have other characteristics; your account is in the second group so BAN!"

Which is just positively-reinforcing tripe making it harder to do anything remotely outside the "norm" even if your intent is 100% non hostile.

Unfortunately, an increasing number of providers are prohibiting VoIP numbers

How are they determining that it is a VoIP number? I don't have any insight on this, so any info would be appreciated

There are services online that the big providers can use now that give them this info. I don't have one to hand but I've seen then when I've gone hunting for the answer to that exactly question.

One way that I know of: Twilio and (probably) other providers let you programmatically look up the number provider details for a given number.

I really don’t know what you can really do about it since using a VoIP number is one of the strongest signals the account is for spam.

Yes, but can you somehow easily get a temporary number? Like those 10 minute email boxes?

I had a post taken down for posting a link to a local gay event. Their algorithm cant figure out pro vs hate speech.

So I started migrating the few apps I used FB logins from, (spotify), then stopped using google login because of facebook. Taught me, not to trust these companies with my 3rd party accounts THAT I PAY FOR.

- Political memes in the masses are making fact-based and rational political conversation difficult to impossible.

- Teenagers should not be on social networks.

- Teenagers who aren't old enough to vote who want to post political memes - that's like 10x me less caring whether they're banned from Facebook.

I have no problem with the ban.

However, Facebook should separate out its identity service from its social networking service. It might make more money doing this because more people would stick to its services. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to authenticate with a Facebook account even though Facebook deems me unworthy of participating in its social network.

Hard thing is that even legit political opinion will be banned if there is enough people that is not in line with your vision. Or like in Ukraine where Facebook moderation team is very very pro government with very narrow vision.

Imagine USA moderation of Facebook consists only of pro Trump's fans with power instant ban Your account.

I for one think it's hilarious that future gamergate situations might have real world consequences for the participants.

The reason they put is 'hate speech' but I'm basically convinced it's a single, stock error message they show regardless of the reason. How can an account be banned for hate speech 7 minutes after it was created?

I think the bigger problem is Facebook's policing of bots, especially since this is a big election year. I'm going to guess this was the reason for OP's ban

Even if that was true in the needlessly inflammatory way you stated it, it has nothing to do with this.

Facebook doesn't need me to be kind.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com