12 ms·

Facebook page unpublished with no warning

169 points by jeffreaky 5y ago

On or about December 26th, a Facebook page that I run for our band called Wonder Bread 5, was unpublished without any warning. The only notification I received, was in the drop-down menu for notifications in Facebook. We have been a band for over 25 years now, and have used our Facebook page to promote our band, spending thousands on paid adds regularly to direct fans to our concerts, and to engage with our audience since 2009 or longer. Our Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/WeAreWB5/ although I can still login and see the page, no one on the other side of Facebook can see it. Thus being unpublished. After about a week there was a notice on the front page that read, "Wonder Bread 5 goes against Facebook's community standards". Under this was a question asking if I agreed or disagreed with this decision. I disagreed with this decision as I don't understand why the Facebook page was unpublished or what we have done to go against Facebook's community standards. After a few weeks of logging in, a new message popped up. I still get "Wonder Bread 5 goes against our community standards". When I try to post, it says "Your account is restricted right now. You have been temporarily blocked from performing this action." So I wonder if this is a short temporary thing, or a long temporary thing that will be drawn out over months? My thought maybe, was to go in and try to delete most everything in hopes whatever I delete is what is being flagged. Does anyone have any insight into that, or thoughts as to what may be being flagged? To my knowledge, we have been in compliance with the rules and regulations of Facebook. The page has never been banned or put in "Facebook jail". When I go into the violations section of our page, Facebook says "you have no violations, thank you for keeping Facebook a safe place". If it is a copyright problem, we have been in touch with The Wonder Bread company lawyers and have been given permission to use the name "Wonder Bread 5" as long as we don't use the logo Our business is really hurting because of this. We can't pay for ads to promote our concerts. We have 13k followers, losing them would be horrible Any help would be very appreciated.

oceanghost 5y ago
Could your account have been hacked and thus someone was spamming with your account?
dmitrygr 5y ago
Upvoted you here. Sadly in today's world, that is the most help anyone can offer. Until it is on the font page and someone from FB looks, and notices that it was an "accidental" "one-time" "hard to predict" issue that "we'll look into immediately" Your page will return, and nothing else will change. Tomorrow this'll happen to someone else.
- new_guy 5y ago
  Today is yesterdays tomorrow. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30102240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30102240
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    And FB hasn’t done anything to fix yesterday’s have they?
mrtri 5y ago
ssss11 5y ago
I hope you get some help here. I just wanted to point out it’s another stark reminder of (one of) the problems with these walled gardens in tech. Something needs to be done to make the individual the customer again.
epolanski 5y ago
This is sadly the reality of these platforms. You're at their mercy and your business can disappear any day.
- Trias11 5y ago
  +100 Yet after reading all the scary stories people keep flocking to all the FAANG-y platforms expecting some mercy. You're on a mercy of some glitchy AI and some random, lousy, unreachable fact checker. Act with that knowledge.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    "Fact checkers" would be hilarious if they weren't so effective at fooling the gullible. I don't know why exactly they sprung up, I guess people eventually started to cotton on that news and internet corporations were not exactly on the up and up. So calling something news or journalism no longer cuts it. We now have another layer called "fact checking" and millions of people fell for it. Pretty soon it's going to be "really truthful Science™-based fact checking brought to you by Experts".
    - hkt 5y ago
      https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/programs/third-party-fact-checking/how-it-works https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/programs/third-pa... tl;dr there's a system that brings third parties and pays them for this. They're not actually Facebook employees but are generally expected to be journalists of some kind. Still, they get it really quite wrong occasionally: https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/facebook-urged-to-act-over-incompetent-fact-check-of-bmj-investigation/ https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/facebook-urged-to-act-o...
      - throwawaylinux 5y ago
        I didn't intend to imply they're Facebook employees or was even talking about facebook specifically at all. Just the idea of calling this stuff "fact checking". > Still, they get it really quite wrong occasionally: Don't worry that'll never happen with super-duper science-based expert fact checkers.
anm89 5y ago
I think this is a probably a good sign that if promoting your band is important to you, Facebook shouldn't own or host your online identity.
toomuchtodo 5y ago
PSA to others who come across this thread: Absolutely be collecting email addresses and general contact info (with their consent of course) of your fans or page participants so that when the platform disappears, you have an alternative method to reach out. Ideally, you have them sign up to your mailing list as a call to action on your Facebook page (or other social media). Social is a great discovery tool, but you want to offboard these folks to contact and publishing systems you control (mailing lists, sms lists, Wordpress, etc) for the day that your page or other social page gets nuked.
- jdkjs 5y ago
  Collecting personal data like that in Europe is hard and expensive to do legally, which is one reason why page owners would rather use Facebook.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    > Absolutely be collecting email addresses and general contact info (with their consent of course) of your fans or page participants It's not hard, or expensive. Simply get consent. (Of course, you won't get much personal information on people that way, but that's how it be sometimes.) Here's an example of how you could do it: > Hello! I'm setting up a mailing list. If you're interested in receiving occasional updates about what's happening in this part of the community, please put your email address in this form: https://thecommunity.example.eu.org./subscribe https://thecommunity.example.eu.org./subscribe > I'll send you a verification email so nobody else can sign you up. There's also a link there to remove yourself from the list, and you can email unsubscribe@thecommunity.example.eu.org. any time to remove yourself from the list. (I'll send you a confirmation email to let you know you've been removed from the list.) > If you want to unsubscribe, please just unsubscribe. If you mark the emails as spam, it might send other people's copies to their spam, too, and it might be months before anybody notices. And if you have any feedback, do let me know.
darkhorn 5y ago
Interesting how troll accounts of AKP in Turkey spread lies and hatred in Facebook (actually on Whatsapp groups too) and Facebook management does nothing but when it comes to a music band they do something irrelevant.
bewaretheirs 5y ago
If there was a legal conflict here it would most likely be a matter of trademark rather than copyright, but trademarks are scoped to particular lines of business.
- Lammy 5y ago
  Seems this isn’t their first bout with rent-seekers https://cohornlaw.com/wonderbread-5-wins-trademark-dispute/ https://cohornlaw.com/wonderbread-5-wins-trademark-dispute/
  - jeffreaky 5y ago
    lawsuits from an ex-member.
veb 5y ago
I had something like this happen in 2012, and by posting it on HackerNews, I had a bunch of Facebook people replying - and fixing it. I was simply running a fan page, but when someone else (the official page I think) came into existence, it took all my audience and ported them over to the new one without warning. I think it had like 300,000 likes roughly. I believe I was one of the few to also manage to monetise a Facebook page way back then using a new startup nobody had ever heard of (at the time) - Teespring! (now Spring, and a YC company to boot). Fun times, but teeth-clenching when Facebook decides to do whatever Facebook decides to do.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  by posting it on HackerNews, I had a bunch of Facebook people replying Not a lot of Facebook people on HN these days. Or at least they don't reveal it. Apple people were notorious for being on HN, and never revealing who they were. After a while, the Facebook people all went silent. Then most of the Google people, though there are still a few here and there that will let you know. It's like the FAANG employees all got the same memo about not revealing who they are. Or they got tired of trying to be helpful to only receive hundreds of off-topic replies from people grinding axes.
  - veb 5y ago
    I can't blame them, you see replies like "how do you feel working for such an amoral unethical company" and you start to understand why they don't like to reveal it anymore.
  - Noumenon72 5y ago
    Did they go to some cool new site we can't get into?
    - stadium 5y ago
      I heard they hang out on Facebook now
      - 5y ago
dudus 5y ago
It sucks your page was removed and I hope you get it back. But hacker news is not your support channel. Call Facebook.
- ehPReth 5y ago
  Which phone number?
- gpas 5y ago
  Imagine spending thousands on a service with no customer support.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > Call Facebook. Have you tried obtaining phone support for a Facebook support issue of this nature?
- jandrese 5y ago
  > Call Facebook LOL. If someone could just call Facebook there would be no need for the constant stream of public support requests on HN, Twitter, etc... Calling them would only make sense if you were a customer. If you are the product you don't get tech support.
stereoradonc 5y ago
Shift to Telegram channels. You can live stream there. There's a "donation" bot to help you with any fund raising. I think you can accept payments in USD/Euro for the time being, and they are expanding options. Channels allow unlimited members. Groups can accommodate 200,000 users. There's a lot of negative press around "far-right" and the "hate-speech" and even "encryption". Those arguments can be spun either way for any social media platform. I'll be happy to help you find your feet. I am not sure I am allowed to share my contact details, but you can scan the QR code here: https://imgur.com/gallery/iQ7AFir https://imgur.com/gallery/iQ7AFir It's simple.
- barbazoo 5y ago
  Isn't that just as risky as relying on Facebook? What if Telegram one day decides to nuke your channel?
  - tenebrisalietum 5y ago
    Differences between Telegram and Facebook: - Telegram is non-profit. - Telegram did not originate in the U.S., it originated in Eastern Europe. - Telegram is not really a social media platform but more like a chat/conferencing platform--e.g. more like Discord. There isn't much in the way of "pages" or a profile. No one is going to know about your group unless you tell people outside of Telegram and provide the link. - The only thing I know of that Telegram does to groups/channels contentwise is set a flag that they host pornographic content, and the only consequence is that the iOS app blocks the group. The PC desktop and web version are unaffected. Easy fix is to use Nicegram instead, and following the instructions to update a setting to allow all content.
    - stereoradonc 5y ago
      Bingo! Nicegram is also on Android (yay!!) and I hope they are able to innovate more in that space.
FpUser 5y ago
I think it is about time people / orgs would start having discussion groups on their websites. I do for my company. One of the first things people learn when discovering us on social media is to take their thoughts to our website. I know it is not really helpful at the moment but maybe for future.
smsm42 5y ago
I think people need to start to wake up to the reality that if you have some valuable social network on Facebook, it can be disabled (by hacker, overzealous moderator, dumb overfit AI, anything) anytime, you have absolutely no recourse over it, and Facebook genuinely couldn't care less. It's how it is supposed to work. I'm reading stories like this almost ever week now, and the common tune is always there's nothing to be done. Unless of course you happen to know people, which may ask somebody inside for a favor. But usually not. I think people who value their social communities should be actively looking for platforms that see their users as something other that raw clicks and engagement profiles to sell in bulk to the advertisers.
reaperducer 5y ago
Change the band's name to "Banned by Facebook" and write a catchy tune that gets played a lot on YouTube. Perhaps multiple versions to appeal to people of different tastes, while still spreading the message.
- not1ofU 5y ago
  and the song title could be, "when life hands you lemons... f*k facebook"
jsonne 5y ago
Welcome to the show. Before I founded my startup I was a media buyer for about a decade and specifically I spent most of my time doing Facebook ads (Since 2012). I spent literally millions some year and couldn't get support most of the time. If I didn't have a chance most people are completely out of luck. Their support used to have the power to reverse these decisions but as of the last 2 years they stripped them of this power. Disabled ad accounts, unpublished pages, vague reasons and no ability to properly appeal are par for the course even for folks like me. It's a horrific broken and downright abusive system to people that are entirely dependent on them for their livelihood. The only thing I found that works is to add/follow employees on Linkedin and DM them. Sometimes that would work. I would offer to help but my contacts have since left. You can try their chat support but again I wouldn't hold my breath. https://www.facebook.com/business/news/new-online-chat-support-uk https://www.facebook.com/business/news/new-online-chat-suppo... Sorry about your troubles. As others have said collect emails and SMS numbers and always keep a local copy of them (Mailchimp and other tools have similarly been known to have such nonsense happening).
- jeffreaky 5y ago
  Thank you for your info, some good ideas here. I have email and SMS from a lot of fans, but not the 13k followers. I realize a lot of the followers aren't real followers, but we did get a lot of response to our page, thus mostly sell out concerts and lots of private parties. I too have a couple people at Facebook trying to help, but it sounds like they can't get anywhere with the politics there. I'll check out the chat support for sure.
- sebastien_b 5y ago
  Sounds like they need to be sued. Big time. You should definitively be able to get at least an actual answer of some sort, if you spend any money - as I've said before[1], this should be a legal requirement any time money is exchanged. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29885389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29885389
tunafish6 5y ago
Pretty much just one of the normal and expected outcomes of using any of these services in recent years. So many of these platforms lock, disable, or delete users' accounts seemingly at random and for no reason, then go radio silent when you open a support ticket. Not a lot you can do in most cases. Best of luck.
paulpauper 5y ago
What is the deal with so many websites and businesses hiding the email address contact? Not just big sites but even small websites. Are people suddenly afraid of email or something?
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  Part of the problem is bad design: businesses often don't empathize with how users might want to use their website. They focus on selling products rather than serving customers. And part of the problem is the existence of spam: people rightfully think that they'll probably get more email spam if they plaster their email address all over their site. Personally speaking, I'd rather have to quickly deal with some extra spam than miss out on a customer.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
what brought you here? Here's another similar music/band FB page complaint thread from earlier in the week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30122572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30122572
- veb 5y ago
  I think you linked to this thread haha. I was confused for a hot second there.
  - ChrisArchitect 5y ago
    Damn whoops Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30102240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30102240
joelbondurant1 5y ago
dirtypersian 5y ago
Are you still having trouble with this? Let me know, I might be able to help out.
t0bia_s 5y ago
> Our business is really hurting because of this. We can't pay for ads to promote our concerts. We have 13k followers, losing them would be horrible If you depend on other site to have your own business working without paying them, then you are their product. Make your own business page and get customers here. If they are truly interest in what you are doing, they'll come.
b3nji 5y ago
Why do people put all their eggs into a centralized system, and be surprised when they lose control? Surprise, you never had control in the first place dummy! Federate, own your own stuff, screw big tech. They are not required.

169 points by jeffreaky 5y ago

oceanghost 5y ago

Could your account have been hacked and thus someone was spamming with your account?

dmitrygr 5y ago

Upvoted you here. Sadly in today's world, that is the most help anyone can offer. Until it is on the font page and someone from FB looks, and notices that it was an "accidental" "one-time" "hard to predict" issue that "we'll look into immediately" Your page will return, and nothing else will change. Tomorrow this'll happen to someone else.

new_guy 5y ago
Today is yesterdays tomorrow. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30102240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30102240
- jtbayly 5y ago
  And FB hasn’t done anything to fix yesterday’s have they?

mrtri 5y ago

ssss11 5y ago

I hope you get some help here. I just wanted to point out it’s another stark reminder of (one of) the problems with these walled gardens in tech. Something needs to be done to make the individual the customer again.

epolanski 5y ago

This is sadly the reality of these platforms. You're at their mercy and your business can disappear any day.

Trias11 5y ago
+100 Yet after reading all the scary stories people keep flocking to all the FAANG-y platforms expecting some mercy. You're on a mercy of some glitchy AI and some random, lousy, unreachable fact checker. Act with that knowledge.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  "Fact checkers" would be hilarious if they weren't so effective at fooling the gullible. I don't know why exactly they sprung up, I guess people eventually started to cotton on that news and internet corporations were not exactly on the up and up. So calling something news or journalism no longer cuts it. We now have another layer called "fact checking" and millions of people fell for it. Pretty soon it's going to be "really truthful Science™-based fact checking brought to you by Experts".
  - hkt 5y ago
    https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/programs/third-party-fact-checking/how-it-works https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/programs/third-pa... tl;dr there's a system that brings third parties and pays them for this. They're not actually Facebook employees but are generally expected to be journalists of some kind. Still, they get it really quite wrong occasionally: https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/facebook-urged-to-act-over-incompetent-fact-check-of-bmj-investigation/ https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/facebook-urged-to-act-o...
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      I didn't intend to imply they're Facebook employees or was even talking about facebook specifically at all. Just the idea of calling this stuff "fact checking". > Still, they get it really quite wrong occasionally: Don't worry that'll never happen with super-duper science-based expert fact checkers.

anm89 5y ago

I think this is a probably a good sign that if promoting your band is important to you, Facebook shouldn't own or host your online identity.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

PSA to others who come across this thread: Absolutely be collecting email addresses and general contact info (with their consent of course) of your fans or page participants so that when the platform disappears, you have an alternative method to reach out. Ideally, you have them sign up to your mailing list as a call to action on your Facebook page (or other social media). Social is a great discovery tool, but you want to offboard these folks to contact and publishing systems you control (mailing lists, sms lists, Wordpress, etc) for the day that your page or other social page gets nuked.

jdkjs 5y ago
Collecting personal data like that in Europe is hard and expensive to do legally, which is one reason why page owners would rather use Facebook.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  > Absolutely be collecting email addresses and general contact info (with their consent of course) of your fans or page participants It's not hard, or expensive. Simply get consent. (Of course, you won't get much personal information on people that way, but that's how it be sometimes.) Here's an example of how you could do it: > Hello! I'm setting up a mailing list. If you're interested in receiving occasional updates about what's happening in this part of the community, please put your email address in this form: https://thecommunity.example.eu.org./subscribe https://thecommunity.example.eu.org./subscribe > I'll send you a verification email so nobody else can sign you up. There's also a link there to remove yourself from the list, and you can email unsubscribe@thecommunity.example.eu.org. any time to remove yourself from the list. (I'll send you a confirmation email to let you know you've been removed from the list.) > If you want to unsubscribe, please just unsubscribe. If you mark the emails as spam, it might send other people's copies to their spam, too, and it might be months before anybody notices. And if you have any feedback, do let me know.

darkhorn 5y ago

Interesting how troll accounts of AKP in Turkey spread lies and hatred in Facebook (actually on Whatsapp groups too) and Facebook management does nothing but when it comes to a music band they do something irrelevant.

bewaretheirs 5y ago

If there was a legal conflict here it would most likely be a matter of trademark rather than copyright, but trademarks are scoped to particular lines of business.

Lammy 5y ago
Seems this isn’t their first bout with rent-seekers https://cohornlaw.com/wonderbread-5-wins-trademark-dispute/ https://cohornlaw.com/wonderbread-5-wins-trademark-dispute/
- jeffreaky 5y ago
  lawsuits from an ex-member.

veb 5y ago

I had something like this happen in 2012, and by posting it on HackerNews, I had a bunch of Facebook people replying - and fixing it. I was simply running a fan page, but when someone else (the official page I think) came into existence, it took all my audience and ported them over to the new one without warning. I think it had like 300,000 likes roughly. I believe I was one of the few to also manage to monetise a Facebook page way back then using a new startup nobody had ever heard of (at the time) - Teespring! (now Spring, and a YC company to boot). Fun times, but teeth-clenching when Facebook decides to do whatever Facebook decides to do.

reaperducer 5y ago
by posting it on HackerNews, I had a bunch of Facebook people replying Not a lot of Facebook people on HN these days. Or at least they don't reveal it. Apple people were notorious for being on HN, and never revealing who they were. After a while, the Facebook people all went silent. Then most of the Google people, though there are still a few here and there that will let you know. It's like the FAANG employees all got the same memo about not revealing who they are. Or they got tired of trying to be helpful to only receive hundreds of off-topic replies from people grinding axes.
- veb 5y ago
  I can't blame them, you see replies like "how do you feel working for such an amoral unethical company" and you start to understand why they don't like to reveal it anymore.
- Noumenon72 5y ago
  Did they go to some cool new site we can't get into?
  - stadium 5y ago
    I heard they hang out on Facebook now
    - 5y ago

dudus 5y ago

It sucks your page was removed and I hope you get it back. But hacker news is not your support channel. Call Facebook.

ehPReth 5y ago
Which phone number?
gpas 5y ago
Imagine spending thousands on a service with no customer support.
ceejayoz 5y ago
> Call Facebook. Have you tried obtaining phone support for a Facebook support issue of this nature?
jandrese 5y ago
> Call Facebook LOL. If someone could just call Facebook there would be no need for the constant stream of public support requests on HN, Twitter, etc... Calling them would only make sense if you were a customer. If you are the product you don't get tech support.

stereoradonc 5y ago

Shift to Telegram channels. You can live stream there. There's a "donation" bot to help you with any fund raising. I think you can accept payments in USD/Euro for the time being, and they are expanding options. Channels allow unlimited members. Groups can accommodate 200,000 users. There's a lot of negative press around "far-right" and the "hate-speech" and even "encryption". Those arguments can be spun either way for any social media platform. I'll be happy to help you find your feet. I am not sure I am allowed to share my contact details, but you can scan the QR code here: https://imgur.com/gallery/iQ7AFir https://imgur.com/gallery/iQ7AFir It's simple.

barbazoo 5y ago
Isn't that just as risky as relying on Facebook? What if Telegram one day decides to nuke your channel?
- tenebrisalietum 5y ago
  Differences between Telegram and Facebook: - Telegram is non-profit. - Telegram did not originate in the U.S., it originated in Eastern Europe. - Telegram is not really a social media platform but more like a chat/conferencing platform--e.g. more like Discord. There isn't much in the way of "pages" or a profile. No one is going to know about your group unless you tell people outside of Telegram and provide the link. - The only thing I know of that Telegram does to groups/channels contentwise is set a flag that they host pornographic content, and the only consequence is that the iOS app blocks the group. The PC desktop and web version are unaffected. Easy fix is to use Nicegram instead, and following the instructions to update a setting to allow all content.
  - stereoradonc 5y ago
    Bingo! Nicegram is also on Android (yay!!) and I hope they are able to innovate more in that space.

FpUser 5y ago

I think it is about time people / orgs would start having discussion groups on their websites. I do for my company. One of the first things people learn when discovering us on social media is to take their thoughts to our website. I know it is not really helpful at the moment but maybe for future.

smsm42 5y ago

I think people need to start to wake up to the reality that if you have some valuable social network on Facebook, it can be disabled (by hacker, overzealous moderator, dumb overfit AI, anything) anytime, you have absolutely no recourse over it, and Facebook genuinely couldn't care less. It's how it is supposed to work. I'm reading stories like this almost ever week now, and the common tune is always there's nothing to be done. Unless of course you happen to know people, which may ask somebody inside for a favor. But usually not. I think people who value their social communities should be actively looking for platforms that see their users as something other that raw clicks and engagement profiles to sell in bulk to the advertisers.

reaperducer 5y ago

Change the band's name to "Banned by Facebook" and write a catchy tune that gets played a lot on YouTube. Perhaps multiple versions to appeal to people of different tastes, while still spreading the message.

not1ofU 5y ago
and the song title could be, "when life hands you lemons... f*k facebook"

jsonne 5y ago

Welcome to the show. Before I founded my startup I was a media buyer for about a decade and specifically I spent most of my time doing Facebook ads (Since 2012). I spent literally millions some year and couldn't get support most of the time. If I didn't have a chance most people are completely out of luck. Their support used to have the power to reverse these decisions but as of the last 2 years they stripped them of this power. Disabled ad accounts, unpublished pages, vague reasons and no ability to properly appeal are par for the course even for folks like me. It's a horrific broken and downright abusive system to people that are entirely dependent on them for their livelihood. The only thing I found that works is to add/follow employees on Linkedin and DM them. Sometimes that would work. I would offer to help but my contacts have since left. You can try their chat support but again I wouldn't hold my breath. https://www.facebook.com/business/news/new-online-chat-support-uk https://www.facebook.com/business/news/new-online-chat-suppo... Sorry about your troubles. As others have said collect emails and SMS numbers and always keep a local copy of them (Mailchimp and other tools have similarly been known to have such nonsense happening).

jeffreaky 5y ago
Thank you for your info, some good ideas here. I have email and SMS from a lot of fans, but not the 13k followers. I realize a lot of the followers aren't real followers, but we did get a lot of response to our page, thus mostly sell out concerts and lots of private parties. I too have a couple people at Facebook trying to help, but it sounds like they can't get anywhere with the politics there. I'll check out the chat support for sure.
sebastien_b 5y ago
Sounds like they need to be sued. Big time. You should definitively be able to get at least an actual answer of some sort, if you spend any money - as I've said before[1], this should be a legal requirement any time money is exchanged. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29885389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29885389

tunafish6 5y ago

Pretty much just one of the normal and expected outcomes of using any of these services in recent years. So many of these platforms lock, disable, or delete users' accounts seemingly at random and for no reason, then go radio silent when you open a support ticket. Not a lot you can do in most cases. Best of luck.

paulpauper 5y ago

What is the deal with so many websites and businesses hiding the email address contact? Not just big sites but even small websites. Are people suddenly afraid of email or something?

logicalmonster 5y ago
Part of the problem is bad design: businesses often don't empathize with how users might want to use their website. They focus on selling products rather than serving customers. And part of the problem is the existence of spam: people rightfully think that they'll probably get more email spam if they plaster their email address all over their site. Personally speaking, I'd rather have to quickly deal with some extra spam than miss out on a customer.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

what brought you here? Here's another similar music/band FB page complaint thread from earlier in the week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30122572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30122572

veb 5y ago
I think you linked to this thread haha. I was confused for a hot second there.
- ChrisArchitect 5y ago
  Damn whoops Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30102240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30102240

joelbondurant1 5y ago

dirtypersian 5y ago

Are you still having trouble with this? Let me know, I might be able to help out.

t0bia_s 5y ago

> Our business is really hurting because of this. We can't pay for ads to promote our concerts. We have 13k followers, losing them would be horrible If you depend on other site to have your own business working without paying them, then you are their product. Make your own business page and get customers here. If they are truly interest in what you are doing, they'll come.

b3nji 5y ago

Why do people put all their eggs into a centralized system, and be surprised when they lose control? Surprise, you never had control in the first place dummy! Federate, own your own stuff, screw big tech. They are not required.