21 ms·

How you can get banned from Facebook permanently

156 points by GNU_James 6y ago

tomc1985 6y ago
Weird, I'm pretty sure I've sent and received nudes recently via FB messenger and nothing happened.
chovybizzass 6y ago
The quest2 was cool. Infact I was going to start developing apps for it, but I decided to return it because you HAVE to connect to facebook and people are getting banned left and right for "bad behavior" which could be as little as dropping an "f-bomb"
- sli 6y ago
  Ban reasons also include making a Facebook account just for the Quest and not using it for anything else.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    This has got to be illegal. It sounds like a bait & switch to me. I truly hope that there's a class action lawsuit underway... Turns out folks are trying to rally one, and that it's specifically illegal in Germany https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/jht6kx/class_action_lawsuit_against_oculus_and_facebook/ https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/jht6kx/class_action...
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  Ya, thanks to FB, VR in the mainstream is effectively dead.
  - sircastor 6y ago
    I think is effectively delayed. Sooner or later someone else will develop competing products. Both Microsoft and Sony have a stake in this game.
    - root_axis 6y ago
      There's also a nascent jailbreak community that will eventually crack it.
      - chovybizzass 6y ago
        They already did, but I'm not into voiding my warranties.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    The Vive exists. Windows Mixed Reality from a dozen vendors exists. This misstep only affects Oculus.
    - jonny_eh 6y ago
      The Quest is the only device that appeals to a broad market. Vive is for PC gamers only.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
officialchicken 6y ago
Unfortunately, there are no simple or direct instructions to follow in the article - just hints.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  It sounds like the meat of the article is: > “After a concert, I logged onto Facebook and was talking to a friend,” Birch recalled. “I was on my laptop and I accidentally sent a partial nude photo. A few minutes later, I received an alert that Facebook blocked me.” I'm not adventurous enough to try this, but that sounds like the reason. It could also not be and the banned person is leaving out information. The rest of the article is detailing the massively one-side "appeals" process and how it did nothing to help.
  - fencepost 6y ago
    The guy's actions after getting professionals involved may have guaranteed that even if they're was a chance he completely eliminated it. He'd better avoid any actual legal trouble because he's clearly shown that he's incapable of SHUTTING THE F UP and letting paid counsel work. On a related note re: Lincoln Cannon's Twitter thread, there was at least one response saying '[yeah they banned me for no reason as well]' where just looking at the profile pic with a QAnon quote was enough to give some indication of why...
- berkes 6y ago
  The 'reasons' given in the article are vague and onesided.
vsskanth 6y ago
the bigger question is if they stop collecting data on you if you're banned ? ;)
- CursedUrn 6y ago
  Of course not
- oceanplexian 6y ago
  If so sign me up. I quit using their platform years ago and haven’t missed it. But I’m sure my information is still being collected anyways.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  Fairly certain they have to in the EU. Given that you always have a right to have your data deleted I assume they'll just delete the account after a ban.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    There is no way for them to delete all the shadow profiles that they haven't conclusively linked to your real-life identity, even though they already contain enough information to make it identifiable if someone were to really try.
dessant 6y ago
Facebook appears to store the personal data of banned people indefinitely, you can log in a year from now and you'll be greeted with the same message. There is a link to download your account data, but they offer no option to permanently delete it. Stripping you from your right to exercise control over your personal data is illegal in the EU.
- judge2020 6y ago
  They don’t stop you from exercising control over your personal data. Try sending an email or formal legal request to FB and see if your data is still there in 31 days.
  - dessant 6y ago
    If true, that practice is also illegal in the EU, because requesting account deletion must be as accessible as creating an account.
- saddlerustle 6y ago
  You can permanently delete your facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674 https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Does that delete the data?
    - saddlerustle 6y ago
      "After 30 days, your account and all your information will be permanently deleted"
      - coldtea 6y ago
        And does that delete the data?
eingaeKaiy8ujie 6y ago
>Please stand by, while we are checking your browser... >Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. No, thanks.
TameAntelope 6y ago
> She is a consumer advocate... and psychotherapist I guess you would have to be, in that line of work, wouldn't you?
qwerty456127 6y ago
> Unfortunately, for safety and security reasons, we can’t provide additional information as to why your account was disabled. We appreciate your understanding, as this decision is final. (Facebook team) Exactly this should be outlawed. Every action of this kind should be accompanied with clear and very specific (including time and date) specification of the reason. > What kind of %#*& customer service is this that it takes over five months to even try to get ahold of a real human being to help with a problem!!!! This is horrible. As well as this - not a single banning/unbanning/whatever decision should be automated. An automatic system can only pint to what is suspicious. > And the unique nature of Facebook makes this type of case impossible to mediate. It is not unique. And everything has been unique at first anyway. We just need to define and regulate this kind of service. Nevertheless users who are stupid enough to actually rely on Facebook without having backup communication channels and backup picture storage just have to be educated about this is stupid. Whenever somebody says they want to communicate via the Messenger I don't even consider this because this is just insane, even to install this app is crazy. Sadly, too many people say this nowadays.
- deepsun 6y ago
  What do you mean outlawed? Facebook.com is private commercial property, they can define rules and decide which customers they work with. The only thing they cannot do is restrict users by categories, protected by law. The solution is to decentralize and connect our own facebooks.
  - qwerty456127 6y ago
    Facebook.com is not a simple private commercial property anymore. It obviously has other attributes which make it different from any other. It's too influential and too important for too many people.
    - root_axis 6y ago
      Fortnite is also important to a lot of people, that doesn't make it actually important.
stevespang 6y ago
Who really cares ? You can openly buy as little as 10 phone pre-verified Facebook logins on the web for less than $20 to use as your own. I never have "officially" joined Facebook and never will - - I get too much pleasure and smug satisfaction trolling Zuckerberg as it is. Somebody will create a decentralized "peer to peer" version of Facebook soon enough . . . that's what keeps Zuckerberg up awake at night
hyko 6y ago
If you’re still using Facebook at this point: You were warned.
ve55 6y ago
"Your account has been permanently disabled for not following the Facebook Community Standards." One problem that is less-discussed is that Facebook is absolutely not a community. It's a collection of millions of communities, and even then just one medium for them, which all have different norms, standards, goals, beliefs, and types of people. Facebook's position is inherently unwinnable because they will be hated regardless of how they attempt to moderate their platform. It is all too easy for us to say 'just do better moderation' without realizing how intractable that problem is, due to 1) differing communities/people, and 2) scales in the billions of users (for example, imagine one employee is tasked with monitoring content from 10,000 people. If you needed to moderate 2 billion people, you would need 2B/10K = 200,000 full-time employees just for moderation. Hiring enough employees is also not enough, as they need to be consistent with each other as well). This isn't intended to be a defense of Facebook, but rather just another point demonstrating that centralized platforms for all of humanity are not the right solution for how we should communicate.
- irq 6y ago
  If it can’t be done without harming society then it should be destroyed. This is why we don’t have nuclear powered cruise missiles, by the way.
shepik 6y ago
I tried to read this article, but instead got greeted by "I am human" checkbox, then (after successfully completing captcha) "Error 1020 Access denied". Article opens just fine if i use EU or US proxy. But when i try to access it directly, or through my work VPN, or through russian proxy, it's Access Denied. It seems that authors of the article how "facebook can ban you for whatever reason" banned whole country.
croes 6y ago
"You aren’t a customer of Facebook" Is this still valid for Oculus users, that bought apps from the app store? They paid, so they are customers, right?
hntrader 6y ago
I lost my Google account because I changed my phone number, and when I logged onto it using another device it asked me to verify myself by inputting the code from an SMS message, which I couldn't do. I went through their automated account recovery process and tried to get in touch with a human to the best of my ability, but no luck after hours of effort. It really sucks, I wish there was I way I could've paid $50 to them so that a real human could review my case, I'd be happy to make the payment given that it's a free service and I realize that mistakes like this can happen. But I guess they'd be criticized if they were to implement something like this, not to mention the incentive to start blocking many more accounts. As it stands, the $ value of each customer is less than the cost associated with manually reviewing cases, so a financial decision is being made. But I wonder if it's a bit short-sighted given the PR and goodwill that could come from doing it properly. Given their monopoly status it probably doesn't factor much into their decision making, though.
- lovecg 6y ago
  > not to mention the incentive to start blocking many more accounts I’ve seen this simplistic “incentive” thinking in many many arguments of this kind recently. I don’t see why this would at all be the case here. Do you think the team responsible for this service will be graded on the total amount of fines collected as one of their OKRs? What does the chain of decision making from top to bottom look like for that to be the case? Not everything is as straightforward as revenue = more of that thing.
  - hntrader 6y ago
    You're right that there's not a good reason to expect incentive to block people, a priori, even though it's vaguely plausible. I do expect that they would certainly be accused that that's their motive whenever someone gets blocked unfairly, which could lead to some bad PR, notwithstanding whether that's what's actually going on.
barbacoa 6y ago
One the plus side facebook finally gave people the ability to permanently delete your account.
pmlnr 6y ago
From the article: > 1) Facebook is a free service. Users are not customers. And although Birch was outraged by the “terrible customer service” he received from Facebook, he shouldn’t have been. Facebook is providing an online social community free of charge to the user. The Facebook Team is not a “customer service team,” and users should not expect the type of personalized attention a complaint would receive from a company of which they are actually paying customers. > 2) When you sign up with Facebook, you agree to its terms and conditions. If you violate any of those terms, you can get banned — with no clear-cut methods of appealing the decision. > 3) Facebook doesn’t owe you an account. There are no current laws that require Facebook to allow anyone to participate. Please try to make your friends, family, circles understand this, and offer an alternative by setting up interest based services for them. Let that be a messaging service (Prosody XMPP server + Conversations on Android or Siskin on iOS); an image board (Pixelfed); a file sharing service (nextcloud); an email server (mail-in-a-box); we can do it, we can move them. Appeal to them being their friendly neighbourhood IT person/sysadmin, and that if they have any problems, they know an actual face to turn to with their problems. The network effect is somewhat overrated in the light of interests, especially niche ones. Give people what they want - image of grandkids for grantparents, etc - but in exchange, ask them to use your service.
908087 6y ago
This means that you can also be permanently banned from using hardware you purchased if you were naive enough to believe you actually owned the Oculus headset you gave Facebook money for.
cmiles74 6y ago
Now that they have tied Oculus accounts to Facebook accounts, they may have to revisit this policy of arbitrarily banning accounts from all services unilaterally and without explanation. The headsets from Oculus are not inexpensive and I imagine some people end up downloading a fair number of applications for their equipment. Regardless of their click-through terms of service, they will have a more traditional relationship with the Oculus customers.
croes 6y ago
"Unfortunately, for safety and security reasons, we can’t provide additional information as to why your account was disabled. We appreciate your understanding, as this decision is final." Could not have been better formulated by Kafka.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  Well, yes, superficially a lot of rejections feel like Kafka in that sense. The difference is, of course, that Kafka's protagonist gets stabbed to death after his conviction.
mumblemumble 6y ago
This sort of aggressive banning over sexual content seems to have really taken off since the passage of FOSTA/SESTA a couple years ago. Social media sites were never libertine, but they were at least more relaxed about sexual content before anything that might turn out to be linked to sex trafficking was carved out of the section 230 safe harbor. They're dealing with a wildly asymmetric risk profile. It would be almost impossible for them to reliably distinguish legitimate sexual content from illegal content related to trafficking in a way that scales to the size of their platforms. But even one slip-up in doing so could expose them to serious criminal liability. So, while I agree that these policies are wildly non-linear, I don't see them having any realistic choice in the matter. A puritanical value system has effectively been forced upon them by federal legislation.
wslack 6y ago
Seems like a good situation for an Oversight Board appeal.
mikeymz 6y ago
If everyone stopped using Facebook then the problems with Facebook would stop
tekproxy 6y ago
"Customer service" lol You're not the customer.
senthilnayagam 6y ago
I was banned permanently from facebook in 2017. my crime I downloaded a twitter embedded video and uploaded it to my facebook account , it was for copyright violation. losing account was bad but worse was losing 10+ years of posts and thousands of photos which I had uploaded of my kids. I never took backups . I appealed multiple times also tries asking help from facebook employees, nothing materialised. I never got my backup . I now have multiple hard disks for my backups
iamleppert 6y ago
I call bullshit. I’ve regularly sent nude photos and full on videos using Facebook messenger. I’m also a member of many group chats and private Facebook groups where this kind of content is shared.
- 13415 6y ago
  Facebook's content and ad moderation is known to be aleatory, as is anything related to appeals or contacting representatives. My personal suspicion is that the company is both technically incompetent and has confused internal handling and supervision. It's no problem as long as you don't rely with your business on them, i.e., as long as you don't rely on Facebook ads, messenger, your Facebook page, or any other paid or free service they offer for your business.
calmlynarczyk 6y ago
I'm in a similar situation right now where I am unable to create an Instagram account. I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts nearly a decade ago. Recently, I've been searching for artists to commission for work, but everyone uses Insta for their portfolios now instead of an openly accessible website. Browsing Insta without an account is a PITA because you constantly get blocked from content until you log in. So I caved and tried creating an account. Go to the registration screen, enter all of my info, and submit. Get a weird error message along the lines of "your information is incorrect; please enter your phone number to verify your info." Enter my phone number; "your information is incorrect." Get booted back to the login screen. Try to log in using the credentials I just entered and get an invalid email address message. Try to create an account again with that email; "that email address can not be used to create an account." So I tried two more times, first registering with all the correct personal info and a different email address. Same result. Try again with yet another email address that I have never used to sign up for an account, this time entering random personal information, using a different web browser, and connecting to the hotspot on my phone instead of my wifi. Still the same result. Ask my significant other to log in on my browser with her account; works just fine. Funny, why do they claim to know my personal information better than me? How would they even know all of that information? I don't know what criteria they are using to decide that I am not a valid person and therefore not allowed to sign up for their service. The only option I have left is to create a new email address and try registering an account using it and some fake identity.
tamaharbor 6y ago
You can get banned from Facebook if you call Maxine Waters a stupid old hag. Go figure.
Udik 6y ago
I posted this today in another discussion, sorry for the spamming but I think it's relevant to this one as well: We need laws that: 1) Will force social media companies to provide, publicly, reasons for their blockings and takedowns, potentially exposing themselves to libel charges. 2) Allow individuals and organisations whose accounts have been blocked to download all their contents within a period of time after the blocking or removal happened. 3) Enforce standards so that the downloaded contents can be easily uploaded in bulk to alternative platforms.
- indemnity 6y ago
  You can already download your data if your FB account is banned. I can still try to log in today and get access to my data as a download, but can do nothing else. Was perma banned a couple of years ago when I decided to return to FB and re-friended all my friends from before in the course of a few hours, and promptly got banned. For bot like behaviour, I assume, I never found out the cause! The data itself is innocuous posts about what I’m eating and drinking, nothing political or otherwise objectionable in any way... Amusingly, their recruiters have also approached me a few times after that via email and LinkedIn, they must not check if a prospect is banned.
  - Udik 6y ago
    I have no idea, but the article mentions people distressed because they have lost their pictures. ("if you should find your account disabled [...] you won’t be able to get your photos back"). Now in the EU there is the GDPR that forces anyone who has your personal data to provide it on request- but I'm not sure it would prevent FB from deleting it right after the ban.
Tepix 6y ago
Today i listened to a show on German radio https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr5/sendungen/europamagazin/index.html https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr5/sendungen/europamagazin/index... that was discussing some planned regulation regarding the rights of social networks. It included the right to appeal bans and to even sue the networks. It seems like something along these lines is a necessary evil.
crmd 6y ago
There are clear antitrust issues here. The consequence of his misbehavior using Messenger includes no longer being allowed to use a competitor of Messenger (WhatsApp), along with Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, etc. These services are leaders in their respective markets and are unrelated to each other except they are all controlled by the same guy. This is why too much power in two few hands is bad for capitalism and humanity, and one of the major reasons antitrust law exists.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > too much power in two few hands is bad for capitalism too much power in too few hands is an inherent feature of capitalism.
hnarn 6y ago
I personally don't understand why anyone feels they have a "right" to use Facebook, or even the right to expect a statement as to why Facebook does not allow them to register. They're a corporation offering a service in exchange for data-mining everything you do, why wouldn't they be free to choose who gets to use the service, and why would they have to justify it? If you, the reader, launched a website and allowed anyone to register and use the service for free, do you feel that you then would be obligated to offer the service to anyone, or that if you denied them service, that you should be required to explain exactly why? Presumably the answer is no, but I'm guessing most people feel that there's a difference between Facebook and just one guy launching a website. I would question where that line is drawn though, at which point, at how many active users did Facebook become public domain?
type0 6y ago
> "Facebook is not a photo storage service." That doesn't matter, what matters is how users perceive it, almost everyone I know keep telling me that it is (if it walk like a duck...)
Tabular-Iceberg 6y ago
If not customers, then what else could they be? Data entry workers? That just makes Facebook’s behaviour all the more egregious. Perhaps there needs to be a social data a try worker’s union.
qwerty456127 6y ago
By the way, what if somebody who wants to play a prank on you steals your phone and sends a porn picture or some hate speech to somebody in the Facebook messenger? Will this block you from Facebook for life? Will cops arrive and jail you for sexual harassment or whatever? This seems like something quite possible to happen e.g. at school.
kokizzu2 6y ago
i banned from facebook, because i m posting against islamic terrorist in my country.. they thought i am supporting them.. stupid.. -_- no longer using facebook now..
- kokizzu2 6y ago
  previous case was: - sharing meme that making a joke about hitler with comment "heil hitler", they thought i was supporting hitler -_- - sharing meme about feminism (2 person holding panel female: "men are stupid", male: "woman are equal to men"), they thought i was doing hate speech.. well, if admins can't even understand a joke, why would i stay there anyway.. (i have another account that i deactivate after got decision about the permanent ban)
bradgranath 6y ago
You are not Facebook's customer. You are the product.
dfilppi 6y ago
Something to aspire to
tcpekin 6y ago
In a very similar situation, I posted a pair of "Waxed Flesh" boots on eBay from my 13 year (albeit rarely used) account. They had plenty of pictures, waxed flesh is a very well known term with regards to boot leathers, but within 2 minutes, my long term eBay account was permanently terminated with no chance for recourse. Besides it being exceedingly difficult to find someone to talk to about this, when I finally did in the chat service they offer, as soon as I brought up my account they terminated the chat with some copy/paste message about how they cannot talk to me about it as it might compromise their fraud detection. People I've talked to have mentioned that it might be due to the fact that there was "Flesh" in the title, but that is a valid description of the good I was trying to sell. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that it felt entirely arbitrary, I had no recourse with regards to the discussion, and eBay is similarly shitty with regards to service.

156 points by GNU_James 6y ago

tomc1985 6y ago

Weird, I'm pretty sure I've sent and received nudes recently via FB messenger and nothing happened.

The quest2 was cool. Infact I was going to start developing apps for it, but I decided to return it because you HAVE to connect to facebook and people are getting banned left and right for "bad behavior" which could be as little as dropping an "f-bomb"

sli 6y ago
Ban reasons also include making a Facebook account just for the Quest and not using it for anything else.
- klyrs 6y ago
  This has got to be illegal. It sounds like a bait & switch to me. I truly hope that there's a class action lawsuit underway... Turns out folks are trying to rally one, and that it's specifically illegal in Germany https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/jht6kx/class_action_lawsuit_against_oculus_and_facebook/ https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/jht6kx/class_action...
jonny_eh 6y ago
Ya, thanks to FB, VR in the mainstream is effectively dead.
- sircastor 6y ago
  I think is effectively delayed. Sooner or later someone else will develop competing products. Both Microsoft and Sony have a stake in this game.
  - root_axis 6y ago
    There's also a nascent jailbreak community that will eventually crack it.
    - chovybizzass 6y ago
      They already did, but I'm not into voiding my warranties.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  The Vive exists. Windows Mixed Reality from a dozen vendors exists. This misstep only affects Oculus.
  - jonny_eh 6y ago
    The Quest is the only device that appeals to a broad market. Vive is for PC gamers only.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

officialchicken 6y ago

Unfortunately, there are no simple or direct instructions to follow in the article - just hints.

colejohnson66 6y ago
It sounds like the meat of the article is: > “After a concert, I logged onto Facebook and was talking to a friend,” Birch recalled. “I was on my laptop and I accidentally sent a partial nude photo. A few minutes later, I received an alert that Facebook blocked me.” I'm not adventurous enough to try this, but that sounds like the reason. It could also not be and the banned person is leaving out information. The rest of the article is detailing the massively one-side "appeals" process and how it did nothing to help.
- fencepost 6y ago
  The guy's actions after getting professionals involved may have guaranteed that even if they're was a chance he completely eliminated it. He'd better avoid any actual legal trouble because he's clearly shown that he's incapable of SHUTTING THE F UP and letting paid counsel work. On a related note re: Lincoln Cannon's Twitter thread, there was at least one response saying '[yeah they banned me for no reason as well]' where just looking at the profile pic with a QAnon quote was enough to give some indication of why...
berkes 6y ago
The 'reasons' given in the article are vague and onesided.

vsskanth 6y ago

the bigger question is if they stop collecting data on you if you're banned ? ;)

CursedUrn 6y ago
Of course not
oceanplexian 6y ago
If so sign me up. I quit using their platform years ago and haven’t missed it. But I’m sure my information is still being collected anyways.
Barrin92 6y ago
Fairly certain they have to in the EU. Given that you always have a right to have your data deleted I assume they'll just delete the account after a ban.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  There is no way for them to delete all the shadow profiles that they haven't conclusively linked to your real-life identity, even though they already contain enough information to make it identifiable if someone were to really try.

dessant 6y ago

Facebook appears to store the personal data of banned people indefinitely, you can log in a year from now and you'll be greeted with the same message. There is a link to download your account data, but they offer no option to permanently delete it. Stripping you from your right to exercise control over your personal data is illegal in the EU.

judge2020 6y ago
They don’t stop you from exercising control over your personal data. Try sending an email or formal legal request to FB and see if your data is still there in 31 days.
- dessant 6y ago
  If true, that practice is also illegal in the EU, because requesting account deletion must be as accessible as creating an account.
saddlerustle 6y ago
You can permanently delete your facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674 https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674
- coldtea 6y ago
  Does that delete the data?
  - saddlerustle 6y ago
    "After 30 days, your account and all your information will be permanently deleted"
    - coldtea 6y ago
      And does that delete the data?

eingaeKaiy8ujie 6y ago

>Please stand by, while we are checking your browser... >Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. No, thanks.

TameAntelope 6y ago

> She is a consumer advocate... and psychotherapist I guess you would have to be, in that line of work, wouldn't you?

qwerty456127 6y ago

> Unfortunately, for safety and security reasons, we can’t provide additional information as to why your account was disabled. We appreciate your understanding, as this decision is final. (Facebook team) Exactly this should be outlawed. Every action of this kind should be accompanied with clear and very specific (including time and date) specification of the reason. > What kind of %#*& customer service is this that it takes over five months to even try to get ahold of a real human being to help with a problem!!!! This is horrible. As well as this - not a single banning/unbanning/whatever decision should be automated. An automatic system can only pint to what is suspicious. > And the unique nature of Facebook makes this type of case impossible to mediate. It is not unique. And everything has been unique at first anyway. We just need to define and regulate this kind of service. Nevertheless users who are stupid enough to actually rely on Facebook without having backup communication channels and backup picture storage just have to be educated about this is stupid. Whenever somebody says they want to communicate via the Messenger I don't even consider this because this is just insane, even to install this app is crazy. Sadly, too many people say this nowadays.

deepsun 6y ago
What do you mean outlawed? Facebook.com is private commercial property, they can define rules and decide which customers they work with. The only thing they cannot do is restrict users by categories, protected by law. The solution is to decentralize and connect our own facebooks.
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  Facebook.com is not a simple private commercial property anymore. It obviously has other attributes which make it different from any other. It's too influential and too important for too many people.
  - root_axis 6y ago
    Fortnite is also important to a lot of people, that doesn't make it actually important.

stevespang 6y ago

Who really cares ? You can openly buy as little as 10 phone pre-verified Facebook logins on the web for less than $20 to use as your own. I never have "officially" joined Facebook and never will - - I get too much pleasure and smug satisfaction trolling Zuckerberg as it is. Somebody will create a decentralized "peer to peer" version of Facebook soon enough . . . that's what keeps Zuckerberg up awake at night

hyko 6y ago

If you’re still using Facebook at this point: You were warned.

ve55 6y ago

"Your account has been permanently disabled for not following the Facebook Community Standards." One problem that is less-discussed is that Facebook is absolutely not a community. It's a collection of millions of communities, and even then just one medium for them, which all have different norms, standards, goals, beliefs, and types of people. Facebook's position is inherently unwinnable because they will be hated regardless of how they attempt to moderate their platform. It is all too easy for us to say 'just do better moderation' without realizing how intractable that problem is, due to 1) differing communities/people, and 2) scales in the billions of users (for example, imagine one employee is tasked with monitoring content from 10,000 people. If you needed to moderate 2 billion people, you would need 2B/10K = 200,000 full-time employees just for moderation. Hiring enough employees is also not enough, as they need to be consistent with each other as well). This isn't intended to be a defense of Facebook, but rather just another point demonstrating that centralized platforms for all of humanity are not the right solution for how we should communicate.

irq 6y ago
If it can’t be done without harming society then it should be destroyed. This is why we don’t have nuclear powered cruise missiles, by the way.

shepik 6y ago

I tried to read this article, but instead got greeted by "I am human" checkbox, then (after successfully completing captcha) "Error 1020 Access denied". Article opens just fine if i use EU or US proxy. But when i try to access it directly, or through my work VPN, or through russian proxy, it's Access Denied. It seems that authors of the article how "facebook can ban you for whatever reason" banned whole country.

croes 6y ago

"You aren’t a customer of Facebook" Is this still valid for Oculus users, that bought apps from the app store? They paid, so they are customers, right?

hntrader 6y ago

I lost my Google account because I changed my phone number, and when I logged onto it using another device it asked me to verify myself by inputting the code from an SMS message, which I couldn't do. I went through their automated account recovery process and tried to get in touch with a human to the best of my ability, but no luck after hours of effort. It really sucks, I wish there was I way I could've paid $50 to them so that a real human could review my case, I'd be happy to make the payment given that it's a free service and I realize that mistakes like this can happen. But I guess they'd be criticized if they were to implement something like this, not to mention the incentive to start blocking many more accounts. As it stands, the $ value of each customer is less than the cost associated with manually reviewing cases, so a financial decision is being made. But I wonder if it's a bit short-sighted given the PR and goodwill that could come from doing it properly. Given their monopoly status it probably doesn't factor much into their decision making, though.

lovecg 6y ago
> not to mention the incentive to start blocking many more accounts I’ve seen this simplistic “incentive” thinking in many many arguments of this kind recently. I don’t see why this would at all be the case here. Do you think the team responsible for this service will be graded on the total amount of fines collected as one of their OKRs? What does the chain of decision making from top to bottom look like for that to be the case? Not everything is as straightforward as revenue = more of that thing.
- hntrader 6y ago
  You're right that there's not a good reason to expect incentive to block people, a priori, even though it's vaguely plausible. I do expect that they would certainly be accused that that's their motive whenever someone gets blocked unfairly, which could lead to some bad PR, notwithstanding whether that's what's actually going on.

barbacoa 6y ago

One the plus side facebook finally gave people the ability to permanently delete your account.

pmlnr 6y ago

From the article: > 1) Facebook is a free service. Users are not customers. And although Birch was outraged by the “terrible customer service” he received from Facebook, he shouldn’t have been. Facebook is providing an online social community free of charge to the user. The Facebook Team is not a “customer service team,” and users should not expect the type of personalized attention a complaint would receive from a company of which they are actually paying customers. > 2) When you sign up with Facebook, you agree to its terms and conditions. If you violate any of those terms, you can get banned — with no clear-cut methods of appealing the decision. > 3) Facebook doesn’t owe you an account. There are no current laws that require Facebook to allow anyone to participate. Please try to make your friends, family, circles understand this, and offer an alternative by setting up interest based services for them. Let that be a messaging service (Prosody XMPP server + Conversations on Android or Siskin on iOS); an image board (Pixelfed); a file sharing service (nextcloud); an email server (mail-in-a-box); we can do it, we can move them. Appeal to them being their friendly neighbourhood IT person/sysadmin, and that if they have any problems, they know an actual face to turn to with their problems. The network effect is somewhat overrated in the light of interests, especially niche ones. Give people what they want - image of grandkids for grantparents, etc - but in exchange, ask them to use your service.

908087 6y ago

This means that you can also be permanently banned from using hardware you purchased if you were naive enough to believe you actually owned the Oculus headset you gave Facebook money for.

cmiles74 6y ago

Now that they have tied Oculus accounts to Facebook accounts, they may have to revisit this policy of arbitrarily banning accounts from all services unilaterally and without explanation. The headsets from Oculus are not inexpensive and I imagine some people end up downloading a fair number of applications for their equipment. Regardless of their click-through terms of service, they will have a more traditional relationship with the Oculus customers.

croes 6y ago

"Unfortunately, for safety and security reasons, we can’t provide additional information as to why your account was disabled. We appreciate your understanding, as this decision is final." Could not have been better formulated by Kafka.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Well, yes, superficially a lot of rejections feel like Kafka in that sense. The difference is, of course, that Kafka's protagonist gets stabbed to death after his conviction.

mumblemumble 6y ago

This sort of aggressive banning over sexual content seems to have really taken off since the passage of FOSTA/SESTA a couple years ago. Social media sites were never libertine, but they were at least more relaxed about sexual content before anything that might turn out to be linked to sex trafficking was carved out of the section 230 safe harbor. They're dealing with a wildly asymmetric risk profile. It would be almost impossible for them to reliably distinguish legitimate sexual content from illegal content related to trafficking in a way that scales to the size of their platforms. But even one slip-up in doing so could expose them to serious criminal liability. So, while I agree that these policies are wildly non-linear, I don't see them having any realistic choice in the matter. A puritanical value system has effectively been forced upon them by federal legislation.

wslack 6y ago

Seems like a good situation for an Oversight Board appeal.

mikeymz 6y ago

If everyone stopped using Facebook then the problems with Facebook would stop

tekproxy 6y ago

"Customer service" lol You're not the customer.

senthilnayagam 6y ago

I was banned permanently from facebook in 2017. my crime I downloaded a twitter embedded video and uploaded it to my facebook account , it was for copyright violation. losing account was bad but worse was losing 10+ years of posts and thousands of photos which I had uploaded of my kids. I never took backups . I appealed multiple times also tries asking help from facebook employees, nothing materialised. I never got my backup . I now have multiple hard disks for my backups

iamleppert 6y ago

I call bullshit. I’ve regularly sent nude photos and full on videos using Facebook messenger. I’m also a member of many group chats and private Facebook groups where this kind of content is shared.

13415 6y ago
Facebook's content and ad moderation is known to be aleatory, as is anything related to appeals or contacting representatives. My personal suspicion is that the company is both technically incompetent and has confused internal handling and supervision. It's no problem as long as you don't rely with your business on them, i.e., as long as you don't rely on Facebook ads, messenger, your Facebook page, or any other paid or free service they offer for your business.

calmlynarczyk 6y ago

I'm in a similar situation right now where I am unable to create an Instagram account. I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts nearly a decade ago. Recently, I've been searching for artists to commission for work, but everyone uses Insta for their portfolios now instead of an openly accessible website. Browsing Insta without an account is a PITA because you constantly get blocked from content until you log in. So I caved and tried creating an account. Go to the registration screen, enter all of my info, and submit. Get a weird error message along the lines of "your information is incorrect; please enter your phone number to verify your info." Enter my phone number; "your information is incorrect." Get booted back to the login screen. Try to log in using the credentials I just entered and get an invalid email address message. Try to create an account again with that email; "that email address can not be used to create an account." So I tried two more times, first registering with all the correct personal info and a different email address. Same result. Try again with yet another email address that I have never used to sign up for an account, this time entering random personal information, using a different web browser, and connecting to the hotspot on my phone instead of my wifi. Still the same result. Ask my significant other to log in on my browser with her account; works just fine. Funny, why do they claim to know my personal information better than me? How would they even know all of that information? I don't know what criteria they are using to decide that I am not a valid person and therefore not allowed to sign up for their service. The only option I have left is to create a new email address and try registering an account using it and some fake identity.

tamaharbor 6y ago

You can get banned from Facebook if you call Maxine Waters a stupid old hag. Go figure.

Udik 6y ago

I posted this today in another discussion, sorry for the spamming but I think it's relevant to this one as well: We need laws that: 1) Will force social media companies to provide, publicly, reasons for their blockings and takedowns, potentially exposing themselves to libel charges. 2) Allow individuals and organisations whose accounts have been blocked to download all their contents within a period of time after the blocking or removal happened. 3) Enforce standards so that the downloaded contents can be easily uploaded in bulk to alternative platforms.

indemnity 6y ago
You can already download your data if your FB account is banned. I can still try to log in today and get access to my data as a download, but can do nothing else. Was perma banned a couple of years ago when I decided to return to FB and re-friended all my friends from before in the course of a few hours, and promptly got banned. For bot like behaviour, I assume, I never found out the cause! The data itself is innocuous posts about what I’m eating and drinking, nothing political or otherwise objectionable in any way... Amusingly, their recruiters have also approached me a few times after that via email and LinkedIn, they must not check if a prospect is banned.
- Udik 6y ago
  I have no idea, but the article mentions people distressed because they have lost their pictures. ("if you should find your account disabled [...] you won’t be able to get your photos back"). Now in the EU there is the GDPR that forces anyone who has your personal data to provide it on request- but I'm not sure it would prevent FB from deleting it right after the ban.

Tepix 6y ago

Today i listened to a show on German radio https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr5/sendungen/europamagazin/index.html https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr5/sendungen/europamagazin/index... that was discussing some planned regulation regarding the rights of social networks. It included the right to appeal bans and to even sue the networks. It seems like something along these lines is a necessary evil.

crmd 6y ago

There are clear antitrust issues here. The consequence of his misbehavior using Messenger includes no longer being allowed to use a competitor of Messenger (WhatsApp), along with Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, etc. These services are leaders in their respective markets and are unrelated to each other except they are all controlled by the same guy. This is why too much power in two few hands is bad for capitalism and humanity, and one of the major reasons antitrust law exists.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> too much power in two few hands is bad for capitalism too much power in too few hands is an inherent feature of capitalism.

hnarn 6y ago

I personally don't understand why anyone feels they have a "right" to use Facebook, or even the right to expect a statement as to why Facebook does not allow them to register. They're a corporation offering a service in exchange for data-mining everything you do, why wouldn't they be free to choose who gets to use the service, and why would they have to justify it? If you, the reader, launched a website and allowed anyone to register and use the service for free, do you feel that you then would be obligated to offer the service to anyone, or that if you denied them service, that you should be required to explain exactly why? Presumably the answer is no, but I'm guessing most people feel that there's a difference between Facebook and just one guy launching a website. I would question where that line is drawn though, at which point, at how many active users did Facebook become public domain?

type0 6y ago

> "Facebook is not a photo storage service." That doesn't matter, what matters is how users perceive it, almost everyone I know keep telling me that it is (if it walk like a duck...)

Tabular-Iceberg 6y ago

If not customers, then what else could they be? Data entry workers? That just makes Facebook’s behaviour all the more egregious. Perhaps there needs to be a social data a try worker’s union.

qwerty456127 6y ago

By the way, what if somebody who wants to play a prank on you steals your phone and sends a porn picture or some hate speech to somebody in the Facebook messenger? Will this block you from Facebook for life? Will cops arrive and jail you for sexual harassment or whatever? This seems like something quite possible to happen e.g. at school.

kokizzu2 6y ago

i banned from facebook, because i m posting against islamic terrorist in my country.. they thought i am supporting them.. stupid.. -_- no longer using facebook now..

kokizzu2 6y ago
previous case was: - sharing meme that making a joke about hitler with comment "heil hitler", they thought i was supporting hitler -_- - sharing meme about feminism (2 person holding panel female: "men are stupid", male: "woman are equal to men"), they thought i was doing hate speech.. well, if admins can't even understand a joke, why would i stay there anyway.. (i have another account that i deactivate after got decision about the permanent ban)

bradgranath 6y ago

You are not Facebook's customer. You are the product.

dfilppi 6y ago

Something to aspire to

tcpekin 6y ago

In a very similar situation, I posted a pair of "Waxed Flesh" boots on eBay from my 13 year (albeit rarely used) account. They had plenty of pictures, waxed flesh is a very well known term with regards to boot leathers, but within 2 minutes, my long term eBay account was permanently terminated with no chance for recourse. Besides it being exceedingly difficult to find someone to talk to about this, when I finally did in the chat service they offer, as soon as I brought up my account they terminated the chat with some copy/paste message about how they cannot talk to me about it as it might compromise their fraud detection. People I've talked to have mentioned that it might be due to the fact that there was "Flesh" in the title, but that is a valid description of the good I was trying to sell. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that it felt entirely arbitrary, I had no recourse with regards to the discussion, and eBay is similarly shitty with regards to service.