I'm in the same position with Instagram. Been sending them selfies with codes forever now with completely no response. My account had a large following and I can't even seem to start a new one with the same username. Process of account retrieval is like talking to plants - you kinda know they're there but they're actually not. It makes sense though - they have colonised enough internet by now not to care about a couple mere users. If you loose access to your account you're likely not to get it back.
On the bright side though, I don't scroll that much anymore. Maybe they lost a couple $ on advertising by loosing a user but I have regained a small portion of my time I spent there. The only real drawback is that I kept in touch with some people via Instagram only.
A situation like this makes you realise that an account in any of the FB owned companies can be taken away at any moment and you shouldn't get attached to it too much nor make it a single point of failure in your business / creative strategy. I'd advice to:
- Keep a copy of your data (contacts, content posted etc.) and try to diversify as much as possible.
- When using Facebook auth on 3rd party websites, make sure to have another method of authentication available to avoid getting locked out.
- Try to get phone numbers of important contacts so in the worst case you can contact them via iMessage / Signal / Telegram.
- If you have a large following, try to stream some of the traffic to other platforms too. If loosing one account means loosing your entire audience you're risking a lot.
In short - have a backup.