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Comment by dessant | Hacker News Reader

I have also created a Facebook account to use their NLP service, Wit.ai. The Facebook account has received an automated block, and they've kept it blocked after a manual review which has asked for a photo of my face.

Now they have a photo of my face, my legal name and date of birth, my verified email address and phone number, and I cannot exercise any control over this data, only download it, which is obviously illegal under GDPR.

Facebook engineers from Wit.ai are ignoring my request for help and the app APIs remain operational, I just can't log into the dashboard.

If you're a developer who considers using Wit.ai, be careful. You could receive an automated block from Facebook and an overworked contractor will rubber-stamp the bot's decision, while Wit.ai staff will ignore you.

https://github.com/wit-ai/wit/issues/1946

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I once had my account blocked and they requested a face and full details and I just entered a fake name plus the Google image results for the pictures they wanted (e.g. "my face" I just used the first Google result for the name of my congressman). They approved my submission and unblocked me immediately despite my account obviously being fake.

That is hilariously depressing

If a human is touching the process they are likely overworked, underpaid, and probably not in the US. If they are then they probably aren't paid enough to care as long as the check list their manager gave them is met.

I used a picture of Mark Zuckerberg. Sadly it didn't work.

He's probably block listed pictures of himself lol

I too have a blocked account, that I had removed (or so I thought) more than a decade ago and has reactivated by itself some months ago. Any attempts to delete it or contact the company has been a failure and I am amazed they are not being inundated by fines for this criminal behaviour, there are no contacts to ask GDPR data deletion (apparently it's a subsidiary that handles them..?) and by that no means to have your personal information removed. I can't imagine buying any software or hardware that would be in any way related to a company with such an hostility towards their customers.

"What should I do if I think that my personal data protection rights haven’t been respected?" https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...

First step is to file a complaint with your national DPA. List see here: https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en

Because you are not a customer, you aren't paying. Instead, you are the product of facebook. Their business model is to sell your personal information to advertisers

Get 100 of your friends in the EU to do the same and Facebook will face huge GDPR fines.

.. eventually. You've got to go through your country's Information Commissioner.

Seems like a simple enough landing page though. Discord server for tracking when people got blocked and you reach the 100-person count (is that an actual EU court requirement?)

There's no direct access to an EU court for most things; in almost all cases you first have to go through national courts.

In addition to that, most of the GDPR laws don't actually create a direct right of action. In many cases only the ICO is allowed to take action. And they may not bother.

Which is why the UK's Open Rights Group is taking the ICO to court to get them to enforce GDPR: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/privacy-organ...

(I don't know where this 100 person number comes from?)

How this would solve the problem?

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