Incorrectly deleted from Facebook? Getting back on might take connections
kqed.org
kqed.org
I have a family member who runs a non-profit organization. They had contracted a social media agency, and one of the things that agency did was make a Facebook page for them.
After the page had gotten some traction, and the contract with the agency was ending, their employee removed himself as an admin on the page in order to “hand over the keys.”
Except he hadn’t made anyone else an admin yet. So the page had no administrator, and because it had strict settings, it meant that literally no one could get into the account.
This page was not big, but it was not small; we’re talking ~50,000 impressions/post.
Over four months, my family member couldn’t get access back to this account. She sent in her ID, some tax documents, a picture of the literal business registration with her name on it (that shared the name of the page). The old administrator confirmed, to Facebook over email, that she was intended to be the new administrator.
Nothing. Facebook left her hanging.
I reached out to a friend of mine who was a dev at Facebook.
Issue resolved in 48 hours. Over a weekend.
Frankly, she did herself a favor. Facebook is toxic.
The main thing is, there's no way for someone to social engineer the standard system. And there's really no way an employee could be bribed, because they wouldn't be friends with the kinds of people who offer bribes.
Security through an anonymous web of trust. Good stuff!
I am so tired of hearing about these stories. We need to start showing up with torches and pitchforks.
I swear, this short-sighted profit-first skeleton-crew styule of management ruins everything. Like a reverse Midas touch
It's called regulation and laws. A lot of other industries have to follow a lot of rules. Tech doesn't like it because it would cost them profits.
Bank branches have greeters who figure out whether you need a longer appointment or a teller; doctors have receptionists.
Even airlines (which have cut support staff) still have air host(esse)s who will help you in flight.
It's easier than it may seem with all the software available today.
I kind of see that now with Signal/Telegram, most of my friends are still on WhatsApp, so using either of those as an alternative to it isn't a viable choice, since i'd have very few people to chat with. In contrast, WhatsApp is an already established solution, so i wouldn't have to ask them to install a new app either (which i tried, about 10% even cared about Meta owning it).
In regards to having any sort of a social media account for a company, that would be a non-starter in most cases - since you'd limit your outreach possibilities severely by using niche networks. That said, it can work for other sorts of software, like file sharing software (Nextcloud over Google Drive or Dropbox or whatever), and federated networks could be worthy of further consideration as well.
The Web allows you to operate a community service which is compatible with nearly 25 years worth of devices and browsers without being required to use anyone else's platform.
As an example, compare Facebook with Mastodon.
The former has somewhere around 2.9 billion monthly active users: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...
Mastodon has around 4.4 million users: https://joinmastodon.org/d
That means that Facebook has 659 times more users than Mastodon. So, assuming that you want to target an audience that's a general representation of society, not just technology geeks and privacy enthusiasts (who'd make up a larger part of Mastodon, presumably), for every 1'000'000 impressions on Facebook, you would get ~1'500 on Mastodon.
With a conversion rate of 1%, Facebook would earn you about 10'000 sales, whereas Mastodon would earn you 15. Let's suppose that whatever you're selling costs 25$. Facebook gets you 250'000$, whereas Mastodon gets you 375$, just because you chose a different platform.
The former doesn't respect your privacy, whereas the latter does. But that doesn't matter in a meaningful way for a business, if your goal is to reach more people to engage with to advertise or even just represent your product.
In a non-commercial sense, consider being able to chat with only one out of every 659 of your friends. In other words, it's unlikely that any of your friends (unless it's a niche group of people with shared interests) or family use Mastodon, whereas many of them most certainly use Facebook. Which of those is better for keeping in touch, then?
This is the network effect, something that every new platform out there has to deal with.
And included in the same fee is the ability to spin up more sites for each friend who wants one too.
And they can all inter-operate and copy posts between each other.
Mastodon is pretty much just another Facebook, split into pieces.
The Web is a real, viable, free platform, today.
As long as you have friends who are willing/happy to use these alternate platforms? Sure!
I'm not saying that platforms like Mastodon shouldn't exist, them being there in the first place is promising and a good thing. If they work for you, keep using them!
However, we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that they're a viable alternative for certain use cases, such as maximizing your outreach.
It's that bureaucracies, poorly run, provide incentives for people to stifle others for personal power.
And Account Safety/Support/Security/Compliance Customer Service is (almost everywhere) very much a bureaucracy.
Who has skewered this all too true trope? Partial list:
- Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (literally run by obstructionist bureaucracy)
- Zootopia (literal sloth in the DMV)
- Loki (TVA is literally a bloated bureaucracy)
I might even go further...bigger, in these cases, is worse. If it's not the lack of staff...then maybe it's too many.
> And Account Safety/Support/Security/Compliance Customer Service is (almost everywhere) very much a bureaucracy.
Fine. At least in that world you can talk to someone. Bureaucrats, I can work with.
But tech just doesn't give a shit. We have this wreckless-to-ignorant willfull blindness to the flaws of what we build and having to exercise one's connections is the exact opposite of the so-called 'democratization' that everyone talks about. Our world practically vomits liberal values of equality and egalitarianism and yet we willfully submit our lives to machines that can shut us out for completely automated and imperfect reasons, with no real recourse save for the savvy and connected.
Like people need to be burning at the stake over this stuff. Enough is enough.
I’ve had many experiences talking to Google support (for ads where we are paying them thousands of dollars) where the responses which are allegedly from humans really seem like a conversation with an algorithm.
They have also introduced fake empathy messages now which come across as patronising and insulting. For example I was trying to upgrade my YouTube premium account and 3 different support reps all said a variation of “I have a YouTube Premium Family account and when I can’t get access to it I feel concerned, so I know what you’re feeling.”
Facebook has how many? 2 billion users? More than even the largest nation on Earth. Even if there was just one customer support worker for 1000 of them, that would mean 2 million employees.
They would have to start charging for access. Not that I dislike that; it would make things a little more balanced, with users becoming customers.
Facebook et al. are really replaying feudalism in some sense.
All these automated systems coupled with a total unwillingness to help, it just sucks. Google is even worse, as you often can't even send a mail somewhere.
And I mean that literally. I have never done anything with the account. I created it years ago, but I never got around to posting a photo or anything. It's just an account with no activity.
When I try to login, I see this:
> Your account has been permanently disabled because it didn't follow our Community Guidelines. This decision can't be reversed either because we've already reviewed it, or because 30 days have passed since your account was disabled. Learn more about why we disable accounts in our Community Guidelines.
So, it's an issue of community guidelines, so what are those? Presumably this: https://help.instagram.com/477434105621119
Those guidelines are all about content, and of course I didn't post any.
My next thought is maybe someone (like a spammer) took over my account and posted something bad. But I have a strong, machine-generated random password, so that seems unlikely.
So I tried contacting support through the mobile app (since I can't through the web site), and a bot sent me a 5-digit number and asked me to reply with a photo of myself holding a piece of paper with that number. I did that and got no response. (But maybe because the ban is permanent I wasn't supposed to be able to contact support.)
Suddenly my account was disabled, with instructions to send an image of myself holding up some code; but nothing has happened since I sent it.
Maybe you got caught up in a sweep for "coordinated inauthentic activity." IIRC, the groups that do that sometimes stockpile inactive accounts for amplifying things in the future. e.g.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/13/technology/ch...:
> On Twitter, Mr. Gal-Or’s video was shared by many accounts with suspiciously bare digital personas, according to Darren Linvill, who studies social media disinformation at Clemson University. This, he said, is a characteristic sign of a coordinated operation.
> Of the 534 accounts that tweeted the video from April through the end of June, two-fifths had 10 or fewer followers, Professor Linvill found. One in nine had zero followers. For nine accounts, Mr. Gal-Or’s video was their first tweet.
Why? Because every appointment they'd ring me, even though if they pull up my details it said "Do not ring, deaf, please text or email" - eventually I just changed my number. So much "private calls" I was just not going to pick up (even if I can hear, I feel it's better to completely understand what the other person is saying.)
On Twitter tho, when you make different handles for say businesses or what have you, you run into the same issue. Maybe I was doing it wrong, but I thought it seemed pretty weird that _every_ account needed a unique phone number attached. The non-profits I'd help out with on social media don't have a contact phone number...
Seems like a great way of making people just give up rather than bothering to jump through hoops.
It needs to be much easier for people to store and publish their own pictures, contact lists, dates, connections, life events etc so that it can't all just be taken away at a moment's notice.
Will I be forever banished from a part of society because your primitive algorithms are allowed to make incontestable decisions without true oversight?
As Facebook's services are increasingly the only way to interact with modern society, permanently locking out people can alter lives. We deserve due process.
Seriously? I use Facebook now and then but "only way to interact with modern society"? I don't know a single service I need that requires Facebook. One can think Facebook has too much power without making it out to be this all powerful overlord. I'd probably tend to lose contact with a few folks if I dropped Facebook but it's hardly essential.
Wait what? I haven't used my Facebook account in years, what am I missing?
But I just had a thought : If Facebook is really that essential for interacting with society as you claim, shouldn't it be regulated as a public utility?
Employers can use WhatsApp groups to coordinate with employees, this is widespread even among government agencies. Facebook Marketplace has succesfully supplanted classifieds in many places. Being locked out means you have less access to goods and services, from used furniture to babysitters, caretakers, food and apartments for rent. You can also lose the main audience of your products and services, which can be catastrophic for members of an impoverished population. Facebook Groups can be the only way to connect with certain support groups or have access to services, especially in communities with limited public services provided by the government.
Once we step out of the affluent bubble, it becomes evident that a deleted Facebook account can ruin lives. I agree that these companies should be regulated to some degree, to ensure that all people have access to de facto essential services.
If a Facebook employee is reading this ... I don't want to create a fake new Facebook account (which would be against the TOS, anyway). My account is so old that it was created back when only those associated with certain universities could get one. I want that one back.
I rarely visit though, I'll use `messenger.com` for close friends/family, that's about it. I just learned to minimise my usage on `facebook.com` and it's been fine. I do understand others have a lot of difficulty doing this and deleting their account seems to be easiest for them. (but it's never really deleted tho is it?)
Facebook is a once-a-week dumpster dive of community / friend news that I always follow up in other ways, so I'm investing even less in it this time round!
bullet dodged and thx corpo for helping me make the right choice.
To open a support ticket about it, I had to send in a photo of me holding up a sign with a captcha on it. Despite following up on the ticket 8 times, I still haven't even gotten a response back. Just miserable.
Finally made a new account in October. That new account has been "temporarily blocked" 5 times so far. I've had to provide my phone number, a 360º video of my face, and more. I really don't know why Meta hates me.
Of course I don't know your motivation, but your description sounds like some variant of the Stockholm Syndrome – an extreme form of domestication, an unwholesome dependency. Are these social sites that much a part of your identity?
Social networks should be heavily regulated or forcefully decentralized. It’s not about the product anymore, it’s about society.
In fact, many report the quality of their life improved upon leaving (even in this very HN thread).
Regarding top-down regulation: not nearly as effective as aligning incentives bottom-up. People waking up and taking care of themselves, both physically and mentally. Which is the part I found so fascinating in lelandfe's ordeal – I'd have flipped out after the first instance of such abuse. Never mind coming back for more, 8+5 times. The individual self seems dissolved, domesticated. "Why does the shepherd hate me?"
but for a lot of people facebook is just a part of the computer where your friends are and it's where they talk and it sucks to not be able to use it
But how I use Facebook doesn't change my fascination with how others handle (what I'd consider) outright abuse by Instagram. Your implied "sucks to not be able to use it" must be strong indeed for them – way past anything I'd describe as nonchalantly as you did.
1. It’s never as simple as “if this then that”. Yes, there are studies that show short-term mood improvements in people upon leaving social networks. There are also studies on long-term health effects of reduced social connections which leads to depression and heap of other psychological problems. Guess how one connects with other people today? Through the social networks. Life may go on without online presence, but it’s a very different life from the one we were living 20 years ago, where only your weird cousin was frequenting MySpace and everyone else preferred to socialize in person.
2. These platforms consciously exploit biases and addictions in order to thrive. You may not see why people want to live through such ‘minor’ abuse as getting deleted from instagram, but it’s usually traumas that drive people to all kinds of abusive situations and self-medication, social networks being just a cherry on a cake. You cannot wake out of trauma, same way as you cannot simply walk away from smoking or alcohol abuse, and ignoring this seems very dangerous when our whole online presence becomes a “substance” for some people. Stopping abuse and healing in that case would also mean disconnecting from huge parts of social life and losing access to community.
Social networks take existing complex unsolved problems in our society, and dial them up to 11, with zero intention to design around the problem or take responsibility. Aligning incentives bottom up just does not work for these kinds of situations.
Decided staying abreast of friends' updates, sharing my own, and being aware of current humor were important for me. I've definitely been happier since using it again (terribleness of Meta support notwithstanding)
Alice: [COMPANY X] ripped me off, took my money and won't refund me!
Bob: Just issue a credit chargeback for fraud.
Alice: But, then [COMPANY X] will ban me!
Bob: Why do you want to continue a relationship with a company that abused you?
There is no way on earth I'd scan a copy of my driver license to send to someone like Facebook, or take a "360 degree video of my face" just to supplicate myself to them in the vain hope they might allow me to become part of their revenue stream. This is totally bonkers.
Alice: Because there are no other companies to use.
In abusive relationships there are greener pastures in the millions of other possible partners. For me, Instagram is the only option: my friend group does not use other social media. And keeping up with my friends and social calendar is important to me. If everyone was on, I don't know – Mastodon, I would switch in a heartbeat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_serv...
inspired by the people that make random crap on youtube for children and were confused about their target demographic being 38 year old women in the analytics, further realized to be just the logged in account for a parent using their ipad as a babysitter
Basically, the company has to have a human justify why it banned a fellow human. No response or no account reinstatement simply makes the company in contempt of court. If the company has a legitimate reason to ban it should be pretty easy to argue (this user posted this graphic content in exhibit A.)
For example, the power company. The telephone company. A sole ISP with no local alternatives. A company that owns an important toll road near your house. Monopolistic social media companies. Etc.
https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/oculus-quest-2-headsets...
Frankly, it provides negative value and my life has been vastly improved since I logged off and blocked their cookies a couple of years ago.
Just because it isn't necessary for you does not mean that it's not necessary for someone else.
People don't need to "examine their life choices" just because you disagree with their needs.
You have a point here.
I'm running with the assumtion that most of the ban appeals that are going to end up in small claims court are from legitimate users stuck with an automated false positive. Pretty sure if a human spent 30 seconds looking at the ban, they would overrule it. The issue is getting a human to actually look at it. I doubt users brazenly breaking rules would go through the process of going to small claims court.
Looking at the thread, I see a lot of people with unusual names (for instance asians and native americans) getting banned. I wonder if this couldn't be interpreted as discriminating these people. Of course, we can only assume FB's good faith here, hence why it would not be a problem for them to produce evidence of bad behavior from the people they banned.
In this case, Facebook is the new website/storefront/phone number for a lot of small businesses as well as the default communications medium for a large chunk of the population and makes it impossible to interact with these without having an account (unlike let's say a telco or email provider which will happily receive contacts from other providers).
It's really weird that HN people think that businesses never have obligations of this kind. It's not even uncommon.
(Also, please don't work for Facebook. You have talents that can be applied at a more ethical company.)
Just saying "Please don't work for Facebook" is just so tone-deaf. Maybe YOU can work for a more ethical company, doesn't mean OP can.
I don't know if it applies for majority of people but in my social circle we treat palantir with stigma and actively tell people not to work for them. So, is it really mean to tell that? What can normal people do ? Telling people not work will help society in long run and also signals advertisers, consumers not to use their product:) It is similar to why USA has banned companies to not use any kind of cotton produced from xiangxinag although they might not personally know if that company is in mortgage and can afford to survive if they don't use cotton from china?
If you work for Facebook then you have in-demand skills that will command a high salary elsewhere. Facebook is a highly unethical company and people should avoid working for them, your imaginative story notwithstanding.
There are plenty of people at FB that work in privacy and integrity. If all of the ethical people left only the unethical would be left.
Also it's pretty easy to understand why a group with hitler in their title including references and photos of hitler was deleted on accident.
There were no Terms and Conditions against VoIP at the time.
And no way back to Facebook.
All the people I actually wanted to be friends with I'm still friends with.
https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-d...
Anyway, I’m excited. Her life is about to improve dramatically.
Question for folks in the know: what’s the best way to download all photos from your Instagram and Facebook accounts? I’ve got some drives I’m going to back her stuff up to, and I figure this is a good group to ask.
They want to be the storage source for all of your emails, photographs, and videos; and would even love to host things like your medical records; but if you are holding a person's entire life then that should entail a higher level of responsibility.
To be honest, I don't think it's wise to entrust everything to a company that is supplying its services for free. If you are paying a company then you have a contract and the company is bound by legal responsibilities that can be enforced by the law. If you are not paying for a service then they have no responsibilities apart from those they hold themselves to, and you have no legal recourse if they suddenly deny you access to the services they are providing.
Now it doesn't even say I'm suspended; it just says that no account can be found with my password, even though it prompted me (after entering username and password) to find out if a totally different account, but with a similar name, was mine.
This is actually quite funny. I'd struggled with the decision of whether to delete my account entirely, but I doubted whether it would actually be deleted or not. I bet this is a more thorough method of deletion than if I'd gone through the multi-week deactivate-wait-delete process!
It's not complicated.
For those who don’t know, ActivityPub enables all of these (Mastodon, Pleroma, Pixelfed, Friendica, Misskey, etc) to work transparently between implementations and servers.
Deleted my FB account last year but rarely used it to begin with. Never linked my IG account with FB either but am waiting for a reasonable excuse to delete it as well.
It’s trivial to set up in a way that your content never leaves your server if you want, blanket or per-post.
Note I’m saying that content flows across servers and implementation, not that all of these share federated auth. You can not “sign in” on any other server than the one you registered with.
Some people have multiple accounts on multiple servers, some stick to one. fosstodon.org is a great one for floss and Linux talk if you don’t want to run your own.
BTW, check my HN profile if anyone wants to be friends :)
Oh definitely, I haven't conflated the two. The issue (at least for me) is I haven't found a way to limit mass propagation of content. Things I post in one federated instance may not jibe for others when it is a two-way street. Vice versa, maybe I don't want the exposure from more radical persuasions and/or content. Trying to reconcile the tradeoffs is also an issue in of itself as well.
I'm also assuming that the support in server software for non-moderator users to have better control (assuming trust in the operator of course) will continue to improve over time.
Mastodon and similar projects are and have always been dead when it comes to mainstream acceptance; I could spend 20 minutes writing a lengthy post but here's a good start: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14579504
I use Ubuntu Desktop but it's still a long way from the OS X user UX experience both in design and being bug free.
We need something open source that considers the user experience first and foremost.
Many uses of Hitler on Facebook would violate their rules against hate speech, so I'm not surprised they have automation looking for that name. But even Facebook now agrees that a play about a real person who was forced to taste Hitler's food before he ate it is not such a violation.