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OnlyFans creator stalked and had sex with Meta employees to reinstate Instagram

218 points by quaker5567 4y ago

azemetre 4y ago
I give this less than a year before we get a scandal where a few Meta employees start banning accounts of sex workers and extort them in order to get their account back.
- BonoboIO 4y ago
  “Show Me the Incentive and I’ll Show You the Outcome” - Charles Munger
- colpabar 4y ago
  I have actually seen complaints of exactly this on nsfw twitter.
- pm90 4y ago
  This is why sex work should be mainstreamed and laws created to protect workers in the industry, including prostitution.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    If sex worn was “mainstreamed” more women would feel pressured to do it, and they don’t want that pressure. It’s like OSHA and minimum wage laws. It puts a floor on what workers in a market economy are expected to do. To avoid a race to the bottom, it’s not enough to simply avoid working in a dangerous workplace yourself (or working below minimum wage or doing sex work), you have to make it illegal for everyone.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - warent 4y ago
      Women already feel pressure to perform sexual favors in exchange for things. That is a problem with society and culture, quite separate from what we're talking about here. All adult women want is the empowerment to make decisions for their own bodies. It is theirs, after all.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        > Women already feel pressure to perform sexual favors in exchange for things. That is a problem with society and culture, quite separate from what we're talking about here. No, it's completely intertwined. Because these pressures exist in numerous contexts, we've developed both social norms and laws to limit the race to the bottom, overwhelmingly with the support of the women affected by those pressures. > All adult women want is the empowerment to make decisions for their own bodies. It is theirs, after all. Which women? More women identify as "conservative" than "liberal"--and even among the latter, legalizing sex work is not a majority (and possibly not even mainstream) position. My mom thinks sex work is very bad for society. It's probably one of the things my mom, all my aunts, and my wife's mom and aunts agree with, despite being from different countries and otherwise having quite different political views. Opposition to sex work is something that women tend to get the most riled up about, because ultimately its mothers and daughters that suffer from the consequences of sex work.
        evgen 4y ago
        > Which women? More women identify as "conservative" than "liberal" Not even close to reality. More women identify as liberal than as conservative, more are registered Democrats than Republicans, and even within the Republican party women skew moderate rather than conservative. Among nonvoters the gender breakdown on various issues that can be easily identified as liberal or conservative shows that women favor policies that are generally considered liberal.
        rayiner 4y ago
        More women identify as conservative than liberal: https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-steady-conservatives-moderates-tie.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-stead..., with the plurality identifying as moderate. People think sex work should be “mainstreamed” (as stated by OP) would almost certainly identify as liberal; and I’d be surprised if even a majority of self-described liberals would support that position. Women tend to be less libertarian than men, and sometimes that breaks towards more liberal attitudes (they are more likely to favor generous social programs), and sometimes that breaks towards more conservative attitudes (they are more likely to oppose legalized prostitution and pornography). As of 2016, attitudes were closely divided on legalizing sex work overall (40% in favor, 43% against). But the gender breakdown was striking: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-men-women-poll https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-me.... Men supported legalization 51-36, while women opposed it 30-50. Women similarly oppose pornography--just 25% find it morally acceptable, compared to 43% of men: https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/snqr1ifu40ogxi0zbyp-va.png https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Pro... Being a Democrat, of course, isn't dispositive of anything. My mom is a democrat, because she likes Obamacare and Anthony Fauci. But she's as socially conservative as any republican. (Like Black people: https://news.gallup.com/poll/112807/blacks-conservative-republicans-some-moral-issues.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/112807/blacks-conservative-repu...) Social libertarianism is championed mainly by the white college educated wing of the Democratic Party. But the party is ideologically diverse. For example, under 60% of Democrats say that “changing gender roles” has “made it easier for women to lead satisfying lives”: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/10/18/wide-partisan-gaps-in-u-s-over-how-far-the-country-has-come-on-gender-equality https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/10/18/wide-pa.... For Democrats without a college degree, it's under 50%. Sorry for the lengthy rant, but people projecting their views onto "women" (or another popular one these days, "people of color") has become a pet peeve of mine. When you say stuff like what "adult women want is the empowerment to make decisions for their own bodies" you’re making a libertarian argument, and statistically that’s going to be most appealing to white men. (That doesn’t make it wrong, but if you’re going to bring identity into it you don’t get to play fast and loose with what arguments different groups tend to find more compelling.)
    - fuj 4y ago
    - a4isms 4y ago
      - op00to 4y ago
        If a market free from regulation improves jobs, I would love to hear how that idea is reconciled with the existence of pimps. A pimp is the abusive free market solution to a regulated sex work market.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        > And please, your citation should not just justify your socially conservative talking point, but also falsify the converse perspective, which is that laws against sex work marginalize those who perform it, opening them up to exploitation from criminals and persecution from law enforcement. Laws against sex work do marginalize the people who perform it. It's a trade off. Liberals tend to place a strong emphasis on that harm to the minority, and devalue the harm to the majority from breaking down the taboo. Conservatives, meanwhile, tend to focus more on the benefit to the majority of the norms, and devalue the harm to sex workers. > I'd also like to understand what you're saying about minimum wage laws. > That's magical conservative thinking, the belief that an unregulated marketplace creates a positive sum game and not an exploitative economy. The belief that removing protection for labour creates better jobs for everyone, and not more exploitation of employees. The belief that removing regulations around commerce will get rid of fraud, not incentivize it. I'm just applying the same arguments that you're applying about minimum wage laws to sex work. In both cases, the laws make it illegal to do certain kinds of work--it limits individual freedom because some people may be willing to do that work--in order to prevent a race to the bottom and exploitation of the population as a whole. What you're describing as "magical conservative thinking" is, more accurately, "magical libertarian thinking." And liberals are quite often inclined to engage in such magical libertarian thinking--the idea that maximizing individual freedom maximizes social welfare--just in different contexts.
        coding123 4y ago
        Can someone please make a memo somewhere that "magical thinking" is not an argument it's just a new thing people say to devalue someone's argument. I don't care what side people are on this phrase is WAAAAY overused.
    - op00to 4y ago
      What’s special about money that requires the government to ban consensual sex between two adults when moneys exchanged? I know the real reason is just plain Christian morality. But ignoring that shit, there is nothing inherently wrong or harmful about two adults having sex.
      - wincy 4y ago
        What about the risk of STDs to a man who goes down to the local brothel for his unknowing faithful wife? What if a man contracts HIV/AIDS and gives it to his wife? What if a woman who already has children with one man gets pregnant from a man she’s not married to, or a man gets another woman pregnant? Are these purely Christian morality or do they hint at very real underlying biological reasons total sexual freedom might be problematic to a society? These sorts of things do happen.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        op00to 4y ago
        > what if a woman who already has children with one man gets pregnant from a man she’s not married to Who cares? There's no law against this. > his unknowing faithful > a man gets another woman pregnant Your hypotheticals talk about people who are dishonest. The problem is inappropriate activity outside of a monogamous relationship. If one partner doesn't discuss their behavior with their other partner, the problem wasn't the sex worker, it is that they are not being honest about their activities. Your examples are moot anyway because regulated sex workers are tested every day, and are required to use condoms to protect against HIV. The risk of STD or pregnancy with a regulated sex worker are miniscule. It's far more risky for the husband to go to a bar and pick up someone randomly. > Are these purely Christian morality > total sexual freedom might be problematic to a society At least for now, we have sexual freedom in many jurisdictions all over the world, and society seems to be chugging along. Sexual activity isn't bringing the world to it's knees. (hee hee) The concept might be problematic to your vision of what society should look like, but the rest of us are enjoying life and letting others live their life choices.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      This is a 1950's era argument that has been proven wrong in many places already. Such as the Netherlands.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        > This is a 1950's era argument Sometimes societal evolution takes a wrong turn and embraces ideas that are maladaptive. For example, in the Netherlands, the Muslim immigrants who are demographically ascendant for the most part embrace these “1950s” ideas, and are outcompeting the Dutch folks who have embraced sexual liberalism.
        jacquesm 4y ago
        Which has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. Really, what an incredibly weak argument. The Netherlands has chosen to legalize prostitution, for good reasons which have proven in practice that the argument that you are making is invalid. That immigrants (the bulk of which joined since that legalization) are demographically ascendant and embrace those same ideas that you espouse is utterly irrelevant. The point is: there is ample evidence that the theory you push is wrong.
        rayiner 4y ago
        Cultures that decouple sex from procreative relationships are in decline. The literal commoditization of it through legalized prostitution is a merely a specific manifestation of a more general cultural attitude.
        jacquesm 4y ago
        > Cultures that decouple sex from procreative relationships are in decline. Ok, so now we're in 1890 or so. Really, this is beyond absurd. > The literal commoditization of it through legalized prostitution is a merely a specific manifestation of a more general cultural attitude. No, it means that you recognize that realistically prostitution is going to happen anyway, regardless of what you think or feel about it, so you try to make it as safe for the sex workers as you can and legalization is a very important step in that. I give up.
  - zzzeek 4y ago
    you don't need to legalize prostitution in order to make sexual extortion illegal.
    - sp332 4y ago
      Yes you do, because otherwise the sex worker reporting the extortion to the police will also be admitting to a crime. So it won't happen.
      - throw_m239339 4y ago
        > Yes you do, because otherwise the sex worker reporting the extortion to the police will also be admitting to a crime. So it won't happen. No you don't, you just need to make buying sex and pimping illegal, you can do that without punishing the victims, what you call "sex workers" is a euphemism for sex trafficked women.
        verve_rat 4y ago
        Not it is not. Plenty of people engage in sex work without being coerced or trafficked.
        throw_m239339 4y ago
        The overwhelming majority of prostitutes are sex trafficked women and children who were never given the choice. Legalizing prostitution leads to more trafficking. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/19/is-legalized-prostitution-safer/legalizing-prostitution-leads-to-more-trafficking https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/19/is-legalize...
        JamesBarney 4y ago
        That doesn't say anything about what percentage of sex workers were sex trafficked. The only stat it gives are what percentage of sex workers were sexually abused prior to entry. The best estimate I've seen for percentage of active sex workers that are currently being trafficked was between 3 and 4 %. https://aella.substack.com/p/what-percentage-of-sex-workers-in?s=r https://aella.substack.com/p/what-percentage-of-sex-workers-...
  - Bancakes 4y ago
    - op00to 4y ago
      I think being a sex worker is probably more work than being a software developer at a FAANG. Certainly higher risk. Absolutely a real job. Better than, say, pharmaceutical rep.
      - Bancakes 4y ago
        pavlov 4y ago
        In 18th century Europe this same argument was used to deprive actors of civil rights. Robespierre had to argue in 1789 that the French Republic should let actors and Jews vote: https://www.amis-robespierre.org/Robespierre-dans-le-texte-Sur-le https://www.amis-robespierre.org/Robespierre-dans-le-texte-S...
        op00to 4y ago
        Jobs are required by law to be constructive to a personality and a family life? Is that some new Supreme Court decision or something? A job is a paid position. That’s the definition. You don’t get to make up your own to suit your own twisted view of reality. Hey, being a police officer often tears families apart, with police having far higher rates of divorce. That’s not constructive to family life. Is policing a real job?
        Bancakes 4y ago
        If a job is a paid position period, then why do you care about prostitutes' supposed rights and comforts?
        nix23 4y ago
        What is your take on alcohol?
  - nix23 4y ago
    Ehh she stalked the Meta employer. BTW: For example in Switzerland it is legal, you even have (in theory) to pay taxes. But still the problems are the same (human trafficking etc), nothing changed, and if you go to the police you have accidents like floating dead in a river a week later. Legalize it but make nothing to take the mafia away from it brings nothing, in fact it gives them a legal way to make money. Maybe it should be a state owned business only and not a private thing, sounds crazy but if you work for the state not even the mafia would dare to touch you, you have stable employment, insurance and medical services.
    - namelessoracle 4y ago
      Wasnt this the idea behind state owned liquor stores?
      - nix23 4y ago
        Yes, but liquor need's no protection ;) But i know what you mean, i really don't have a solution just some ideas, i just know that "just" legalize it did not change the life's (or just very few of them) to the better.
    - icambron 4y ago
      Doesn’t sound like she actually stalked anyone. She’s using the term colloquially to mean “I spent time browsing a stranger’s social media profile”, which is a common usage.
  - warent 4y ago
  - make3 4y ago
    wtf does this have to do with extortion being illegal. it could be a shakedown for money or whatever too
  - some_random 4y ago
    The sex work you see on OnlyFans is already legal, the problem isn't legality it's the attitudes of social media companies, platforms, and payment processors.
  - iKevinShah 4y ago
    This is also why "Big Tech" has to be mainstreamed and laws created to protect user accounts and provide a streamlined, regulated way to remove | ban | un-ban | reinstate accounts. We should not be letting "our systems" in Big Tech do their thing. Specially when it comes to a person's accounts
  - coding123 4y ago
    Oh THIS is why.
- carnitine 4y ago
  Don’t think they’d be stupid enough to try, surely the victim would go straight to either the company or the media with black and white proof?
  - azemetre 4y ago
    I would hope people feel empowered to go to the authorities or media, but all too often sex workers are heavily discriminated against. Sometimes going to the police can get them in trouble, going to the media may bring unnecessary attention to them and their family. I agree with the other comment about how we need legislation to ensure proper channels on how to get account access back or services. Far too often if you dare question say Google or Facebook your account may be banned for life with little retribution on your end. That's why these platforms need to be broken up or follow standards that could allow people to take their social graphs/data and go to other competitors.
- hamiltonians 4y ago
  elon musk
aresant 4y ago
It is mindboggling to me that HN will argue all day about the merits of a peer reviewed scientific paper and then accept ad nauseum that this PERFECTLY constructed viral story told on a podcast represents TRUTH EDIT - Downvoted? Do others accept this is true? Why?
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  Yeah, it's strange. This was a person riffing on a podcast, it's not even like there was some journalism involved. Just an interesting anecdote that may or may not be true.
- treesknees 4y ago
  There is an embedded Twitter video with the exact clip where the OF creator herself tells the story, it's not just a constructed headline. But I'll agree that the HN headline leaves out the word "says" which changes it a bit. We can't know for sure whether she's telling the truth about this.
  - kamranjon 4y ago
    I think they are suggesting that this OF creator could just be making this story up
    - aresant 4y ago
      Correct.
    - treesknees 4y ago
      They edited their comment to remove the word "headline" after I commented, changing the direction of their comment from the article reporting it to the video content.
- dntrkv 4y ago
  If it’s negative press for FANG, it’s always true. That’s the HN way.
avthar 4y ago
Source clip: https://twitter.com/adam22/status/1527005564802600960?s=20&t=QtZGN7OYfnXasipeztyYcA https://twitter.com/adam22/status/1527005564802600960?s=20&t...
- altairprime 4y ago
  Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31436182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31436182
barelysapient 4y ago
FANG customer support: Level 1 - Start a thread on Hackernews or Twitter. Level 2 - Fuck'em.
- warning26 4y ago
  Now we know what course of action to suggest the next time someone posts "Ask HN: My [FAANG] account is locked"!
  - shantnutiwari 4y ago
    Will it work for ugly people like me?
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      Ugly male? No. Ugly female? Worth a shot.
    - bsedlm 4y ago
      sorry to say, but no. (or at the least, it's very highly unlikely)
- durnygbur 4y ago
  Talked with friends occasionally transporting packages in Central Europe for Amazon. In case they want to appeal some vague "fees" deducted from bank transfer, they have to call Amazon's office in Dublin and they're put on hold until they give up. Oh, and English only of course.
- ethotool 4y ago
  You have to stalk them first
- zerr 4y ago
  Same for Paypal.
- thunkshift1 4y ago
  This is funny/sad because it is true now
newaccount2021 4y ago
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
might be an exaggeration or false claim to get traffic to her of
- pm90 4y ago
  unlikely. Would be easy to disprove.
  - fuj 4y ago
  - etchalon 4y ago
    How would you disprove it? Ask literally every Meta employee whether they participated, and assume no one would lie about that?
    - Justsignedup 4y ago
      i got a clipboard, a checklist, and a navy blue shirt with pencils in the side pocket. we can make this inquiry happen. Also we can steal their servers all with the same outfit.
    - saddd 4y ago
      It says that each individual Meta employee had to personally appeal to have her specific Instagram account unblocked. Seems like it would be trivial for someone at Meta to verify. If she's not lying, she just completely threw those Meta employees under the bus (if they're still working there).
      - altdataseller 4y ago
        And so what if she threw them under the bus? What are the consequences of that, compared to the extra attention/traffic she just garnered?
        robonerd 4y ago
mproud 4y ago
This is called corruption.
- krageon 4y ago
  If you read what actually happened you can see that all proper internal procedures were followed. Corruption heavily implies that something that exists for other people is (temporarily) removed, or some requirement is waived as a result of compensation. That is not what happened.
  - GlassKingdom 4y ago
    It’s “corruption” by any credible meaning of the word. If the story is true then it’s a catastrophe for Meta.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - austinkhale 4y ago
    If internal procedures allow Meta employees to be paid (in cash or favors of any kind) to be internal champions for repeatedly resubmitting bans to the Integrity Team roulette appeals process, “proper” is the opposite of the word I would use to describe the practice.
    - altairprime 4y ago
      That’s how “friends and family” policies work, though: the company gives you perks to bestow upon your friends, so that they can trade their relationship with you for a benefit.
  - enumjorge 4y ago
    She used sexual favors to get an employee to unban the account that shouldn’t have been banned in the first place. I doubt those are proper procedures as defined by Meta’s guidelines.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
908B64B197 4y ago
These account bans should be handled by small claims courts. Plain and simple.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Given how common they seemed to be handed out by algorithms, might have to expand the courts.
marban 4y ago
/Aside, I wonder how the Twitter blue check black market (~$10k) works from an 'organizational' perspective.
- datalopers 4y ago
  They’re rolling out a new pricing plan once Musk takes over: one handjob and then you choose between a horse or a blue checkmark
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    That is a horse of a different…I’ll show myself out.
  - testplzignore 4y ago
    I understand the horse, but how do I give a handjob to a checkmark?
- Jerrrry 4y ago
  Pretty efficient market. Depending on your check mark, subscriber count, and audience, you can easily sell any blue checkmark for 1-10k. Access to the Twitter dashboard? 50k 0day account takeover - 150+k, rarely happens anymore
  - marban 4y ago
    From what I've seen on some forums, they're not selling check marked accounts but actually provide one for your specific account.
    - praisewhitey 4y ago
      a couple of years ago Twitter rolled out the ability to transfer a bluecheck between accounts https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYfePxLUYAAoZj9.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYfePxLUYAAoZj9.png
jmbwell 4y ago
Turns out, it's not the creator of OnlyFans, but a "creator" /on/ OnlyFans. Also, an Instagram /account/ was reinstated, not all of Instagram.
- warent 4y ago
  Thanks for clarifying. I was actually thinking the founder of OnlyFans and admittedly have a really bad tendency about 25% of the time to only read headlines.
  - SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    are there stats on this? >have a really bad tendency about 25% of the time to only read headlines.
- jimmy2020 4y ago
  should read this comment before reading the article
- make3 4y ago
  you seriously thought it was about reinstating all of Instagram?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dundermuffl1n 4y ago
  Being a "creator" or "influencer" has pervaded our cultural ethos so deeply, you'd be in the minority for assuming that it's the creator of Onlyfans or that all of Instagram had to be reinstated. These are popular consumer brands, and colloquialism would prefer their "insta" or "instagram", rather than "instagram profile".
  - MiddleEndian 4y ago
    I also assumed based on this title that it was the founder of OnlyFans and was underwhelmed by the actual article.
norswap 4y ago
They wouldn't have this issue if they allowed (but flagged for children, advertisers, people who don't opt in) NSFW content in the first place. It's allowed on Twitter, so why not on Instagram?
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  Seriously, Instagram is full of essentially soft core porn as it is.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  Facebook makes over 20x as much money as Twitter, and it's not just on volume; they are vastly better at monetizing each of their ad slots. It's perfectly OK to hate Facebook as a platform or a concept, but their ad revenue team is very good their jobs, and I would be very hesitant to question their decision-making on what does and doesn't attract advertisers.
verisimi 4y ago
If its the corporate policy, that's fine, no? Its fine to ban or un-ban people. If corporate policy demands that infractions can be revoked by sex, and people agree to do it, I don't see the problem. This is not a legal issue. Its not a freedom of speech issue, which in any case can also bypassed by corporate policy.
- fsociety 4y ago
  It’s a social engineering attack in a way. I would not blame the OnlyFans creator but I would encourage silently letting the employee who did this go with severance pay. Imo long-term, companies should be legislated into having fair ban appeals, and enforced in transparency of why accounts are banned after they are a certain size. Then I would happily start debating the removal of these employee specialty services which allow this. I say this as someone who has used this power before for legitimate reasons. There should be official channels to do this with companies as large as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube etc.
  - verisimi 4y ago
    Community guidelines are fine - they are all you need. Freedom of speech can be ignored - if the community guidelines say so. Similarly, if the guidelines are that if you 'offer up' you can be reinstated, and you are fine to do that, that's fine too? We're in the world of corporate policy now. Laws have nothing to do with! These are private corporations, and their policies determine what's right or wrong on their platforms.
durnygbur 4y ago
LinkedIn, Instagram, OnlyFans, Facebook, face tattoos. How it happens that this niche American cesspool gained global attention?
- Radim 4y ago
  "Demand generation". If you're able to whip the masses into a frenzy, the sky is the limit. Under the hood, our human propensity toward "storytelling" and social cohesion is both a blessing and our bane. People collectively go for convenient (but leaky) abstractions, leaders, influencers, fads. AKA the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. The cesspool is not specifically American. As long as the music plays, economy's touted "fundamentals" pretty much come down to ape psychology. The music just plays louder is some places than others, at the moment.
S_A_P 4y ago
Maybe this tactic will help me get my youtube account back. Any Googlers interested in a 45 year old graying software developer with a dad bod? But seriously, I wrote a post about my youtube account getting banned and without telling me what caused it just shut down my request for review. Sounds like in all of these companies you can either have a false positive AI flag you, someone decide they dont like you online and report you for something that isnt necessarily true/the case, and then you have some tech workers who either dont care enough to really fix problems or enjoying their fiefdoms and the power they wield at strangers.
- panda88888 4y ago
  I remember reading on hn that even googlers have trouble recovering their own old accounts…
- judge2020 4y ago
  YouTube loses more money paying someone to review your case than what they stand to make if you come back. Their insurance policy for this is the guarantee that any actually large creator getting banned will generate enough PR buzz for a fully-fledged Googler to be notified and raise an internal issue about it.
  - wincy 4y ago
    Oh yeah, I remember Jordan Peterson got banned, then suddenly Joe Rogan was making a fuss on Twitter about it. Next day, boom everything back to normal.
  - eloff 4y ago
    I would pay to have a human review my case and actually do something about it. When my wife lost access to her Instagram through a 2FA cockup, I paid over $100 and about $500 of my time to get the original phone number back through a friend. It was all for naught in the end. I used to defend Google around here back in the day when they were just ambiguously evil. Now I really hate Google and Meta. They both do these kinds of things with accounts, with apps, with "fact" policing, etc. I hope the government fucks them up.
josegonzalez 4y ago
The end goal is a bit different, but this reminds me of how some recruiters find my contact information across a ton of sites to try and contact me about changing jobs (some even find work contact info and contacting me there).
dymk 4y ago
Employee will probably be fired. While there’s nothing wrong with being a sex worker, I have a hard time respecting what this woman has done by throwing the employee under the bus. Seems like the only reason to share this story was to advertise her OF. All she had to do was say nothing, and Meta probably wouldn’t have found out. But it’s going to be very simple to look at the admin tool logs and see exactly who unbanned her account.
- zht 4y ago
  what? you see no issues with an employee of Meta getting accounts unbanned in exchange for sex?
  - dymk 4y ago
    I never said that either. I think the whole situation is screwed up. The company’s internal tools being structured such that a random employee can unban an account without oversight is obviously a bad thing, and it’s an example of corruption. I’m also blown away at how short-sighted this woman is about the man’s employment, after he did her frankly a big favor in return for sex. Not to mention her account will just get banned again, given she admitted to it on video.
    - undecisive 4y ago
      Nah. Hopefully she isn't an idiot and has downloaded everything she cared about from facebook. But the fact is that we're all talking about this, inside tech spheres as well as outside. A literal real-life "who do I have to screw to get my stuff back?" moment. It means that no matter how little you respect what she has done, she may have just changed the world. Or, we'll forget in five minutes and Metabook will continue to ban people with impunity. Just my opinion, but someone being willing to lose something they sold their body to win back is reasonably respectable. Certainly they've done the world a big favour, whatever their motivations.
    - pvg 4y ago
      how short-sighted this woman is about the man’s employment Not sure you're assigning the responsibility to look after someone's career to the right person here.
starkd 4y ago
Did team Meta just find a new "fringe benefit" ?
irrational 4y ago
> Instagram has an algorithm that automatically shuts down accounts that are flagged or reported. That seems like a situation ripe for abuse. Just continually report any account you want taken down.
- BoxOfRain 4y ago
  This happened to my Facebook page, Meta is just completely oblivious to the notion of malicious reporting.
  - fencepost 4y ago
    Meta is just completely oblivious to the notion of malicious reporting. I think you misspelled 'indifferent'
havblue 4y ago
I'm not sure that the meta employees thought of it as a quid pro quo when they hooked up with her. It isn't like Facebook could ban employees from sleeping with all Facebook users. So I suspect the actual fire-able offense was when they intervened on her behalf as a favor.
- namelessoracle 4y ago
  If they have a family and friends request to get things reviewed (as others have alluded too) but that person cant necessarily unban them himself. Is is inappropriate to use that process for a romantic partner? How do we know that the conversation was "i will have sex with you if you unban my account" (which is pretty clear quid pro quo), and not her establishing a relationship then asking for a favor from a "friend"? It seems like a pretty dark rabbit hole if Meta of all places has to figure out if this person has a relationship with a person for pragmatic reasons or not. How many relationships do you have in your life that exist to facilitate X/Y/Z. People trying to befriend people who are perceived to have some kind of power (be it economic, social, political, or in this case i guess technological?) is a very old tale.
  - havblue 4y ago
    Yes, there's no way to tell that there was a clear quid pro quo. I would say that these employees could be fired for intervening on behalf of someone who says she had sex with them to get her account back, though. You can be "friends" with your boss at work but hr will want to know about it if a physical relationship starts because of conflicts of interest and an appearance of impropriety. Friendship won't be treated like a bribe but sex definitely could be, especially if one party says it is.
- fire 4y ago
  The most dire offense is probably the information leak of internal processes (both programmatic and business)
- robonerd 4y ago
  I suspect you're right. From the article: “We met up and like I fucked a couple of them and I was able to get my account back like two or three times,” she says. “ It sounds like she's saying she met up with more Meta employees than she actually fucked. So what happened with the others, did they get cold feet and back out of the deal? Maybe. Or maybe they they didn't realize there was a deal at all, and thought the meeting was simply a date that didn't pan out.
BonoboIO 4y ago
That some very "sophisticated" social engineering. Jokes aside. Maybe the story is true, maybe it's just fabricated to tell interesting stories. In an ideal world, there would be transparent governed by law policies what can and can not be shown or done. But facebook, instagram, google, tiktok ... will fight to their graves against transparency. It's bringing them money. Like the facebook/google ad deal, facebook maga money, googles ad dominance ...
- lbriner 4y ago
  I don't want to defend them because I hate Meta particularly but the problem with transparency or the conversation that most people want to have is that something that is worth like $50 to them turns into $1000 of time arguing with an account holder about "this doesn't violate", "yes it does". It is easier to stonewall. Like others have said, however, there could be some other mechanism, whether paid for or something for scenarios like this where her account was worth a lot to her and the money could even be refunded if they agree that the red flag was bogus. The other hard problem is that even the fact she works in the adult industry is enough for some people to flag the account. Lots of parents don't like their kids following insta stars who might lead them astray!
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    > Lots of parents don't like their kids following insta stars who might lead them astray! Human sexuality is one of the only realms where (to some) ignorance == virtue. At some point these kids are going to have to live in a world that includes sex workers, thirst trap Instagram accounts, and a range of human sexual behaviours. Can't keep them ignorant forever.
benjaminwootton 4y ago
Lost a Google account recently when they randomly started asking me to confirm a number which I no longer have access too and cannot remember. So annoying to have no support. Must setup something with a commercial provider soon.
MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
so there is a way
anoncow 4y ago
I will have to do what to get my website unblocked on the Sharing Debugger?! No wonder there is no easy way to reach support at Meta.
- pretext-1 4y ago
  They are busy people, have to set priorities ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
ibejoeb 4y ago
> Linktree is a one-stop-shop link that can link out to other websites from one webpage game changer.
- imperistan 4y ago
  you can only put a single link in your insta account so its a quick and simple way to link to multiple pages from your insta without building a webpage for it. It's used a lot, so in that sense it's a game changer
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  It's as much of a "game-changer" (or not) as bit.ly: a crucial workaround of artificial limitations on closed platforms.
  - ibejoeb 4y ago
    I get it. I'm just laughing at the description. It sounds as if it could have been written in 1991.
gigatexal 4y ago
Replace Instagram account with any hard drug and then this is more common place. “[hard drug]-addict had sex with man to get more [hard drug].” Here I guess it’s a bit different cuz she’s an adult content creator … but the idea is more or less the same. What would the Kardashian’s do if they got cut off from Instagram?
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  The idea is absolutely not the same. She didn't want her Instagram back because she's addicted to insta as a user. She wanted it back because her social media presence is part of the business she runs. The analogue here is the casting couch, sans the implication that it's sprung unexpectedly on her.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    The hand wringing that you're implying with the casting couch analogy doesn't really follow since she's already engaged in that line of work. This is like giving the right people free promotional <whatever it is you make> because your booth got kicked out of the craft fair for a dumb reason.
    - wutbrodo 4y ago
      What hand-wringing? I even went out of my way to exclude the removal of agency implied by the term casting couch.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    > She didn't want her Instagram back because she's addicted to insta as a user. She wanted it back because her social media presence is part of the business she runs. Are you sure there is a clear-cut line between the two? Which was she first, a sex worker or a habitual social media user? If she was first a social media addict, then it seems conceivable that she found this line of work because it was adjacent to social media, a straight forward way to turn her social media addiction into a job.
zip1234 4y ago
Meta employees can put a ticket in on behalf of family and friends to get an account unbanned if they think it was done in error. It basically just is a higher priority than normal tickets that users file themselves. My guess is that was what the employee did.
- notacoward 4y ago
  IIRC it was called "oops" or something like that, but it turned into a black hole about half way through my tenure there.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
I mean anyone who works for Facebook already has severely compromised morals, so I wouldn't be surprised if they are engaging in such activities.
BenoitP 4y ago
Is this going to get flagged like the one 5 hours ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31445380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31445380
- coding123 4y ago
  So that's kinda proof that FB employees are being told to flag the story to try to bury it. I hope HN prevents this one from that fate. However, I did notice that it dropped off the front page very quickly.
BoxOfRain 4y ago
If anyone who works for Meta is in this thread, can you tell me why my Facebook page got unpublished for content rule violations, the strike got reversed after we challenged the blatently incorrect violation, but is still unpublished and invisible to anyone but the admins? This behaviour on the part of Meta completely ruined what was quite a nice little community and I've not been able to get a satisfying explantion for this inconsistency. 'We realised the decision that got your page unpublished was wrong and reversed it, but we're still keeping your page unpublished' seems massively contradictory to me. The admins of the page (myself included) have developed our own app pretty much out of spite to replace the Facebook page so it's not the end of the world, but I'd love to know what's going on behind the scenes that such a state is even possible for a page. It feels like there's something pretty fundamentally wrong with how Facebook handles page moderation.
- ugjka 4y ago
  Do you pay Facebook? If not, you mean nothing...
  - BoxOfRain 4y ago
    I'm well aware, their long history of shabby treatment towards our page actually meant our own app has been in development for a while (on and off around our proper jobs and the aftermath of a health crisis). I'd just like some insight into whatever Kafkaesque process lead to this happening, it's morbid curiosity more than anything.
    - ugjka 4y ago
      It is a liability for them to tell you anything
- tablespoon 4y ago
  Facebook doesn't care about what you want, they're only there to exploit you. I got a taste of this when I (unsuccessfully) tried to fix a grossly inaccurate situation with Facebook places (the places for two very different schools were merged, and any attempt to create a new place to fix it would quickly get incorrectly auto-merged). I discovered a large Facebook-endorsed community of people working for free to try to fix Facebook's places data without any special tools or support (might have been this https://www.facebook.com/editorcommunity/ https://www.facebook.com/editorcommunity/). People would just bang their heads constantly against Facebook's systems, and get nowhere, even though there were Facebook employees managing the group. I joined for a time, never got my issues resolved, and eventually just had to quit because it was too frustrating. It was just offensive how much effort those people where volunteering and how little help Facebook would give them to be successful at helping Facebook.
shadowtree 4y ago
dang taking note ;) /pleasedontbanme
- soleposition 4y ago
- dougmsmith 4y ago
908B64B197 4y ago
At least it was only to get an account unbanned, not some other favors [0] [1]. [0] https://usdailyreport.com/2020/12/10/christine-fang-eric-swalwell-tulsi-gabbard-chinese-spy-donald-trump-kr-tucker-carlson_n_12571.html https://usdailyreport.com/2020/12/10/christine-fang-eric-swa... [1] https://nypost.com/2020/12/08/suspected-chinese-spy-slept-with-courted-us-politicians-report/ https://nypost.com/2020/12/08/suspected-chinese-spy-slept-wi...
lucasyvas 4y ago
If it wasn't for the dangerous precedent, I probably wouldn't have a problem with this - it's definitely a bizarre transaction to me though.
analyst74 4y ago
This is wild, I remember even a bunch of very motivated and persistent YouTube employees couldn't remove a racist song calling for violence against Asians. Does Instagram have much less red tape on content moderations than YouTube?
nikolay 4y ago
It fascinates me how now everybody's a "creator" once of a sudden, which erodes the meaning of the word... at least use "maker"! Anyway, this incident shows how ridiculous the Big Tech is with providing no support and no means to dispute their wrongdoing - people are forced to do crazy things like these just to get their accounts back!

218 points by quaker5567 4y ago

I give this less than a year before we get a scandal where a few Meta employees start banning accounts of sex workers and extort them in order to get their account back.

BonoboIO 4y ago
“Show Me the Incentive and I’ll Show You the Outcome” - Charles Munger
colpabar 4y ago
I have actually seen complaints of exactly this on nsfw twitter.
pm90 4y ago
This is why sex work should be mainstreamed and laws created to protect workers in the industry, including prostitution.
- rayiner 4y ago
  If sex worn was “mainstreamed” more women would feel pressured to do it, and they don’t want that pressure. It’s like OSHA and minimum wage laws. It puts a floor on what workers in a market economy are expected to do. To avoid a race to the bottom, it’s not enough to simply avoid working in a dangerous workplace yourself (or working below minimum wage or doing sex work), you have to make it illegal for everyone.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - warent 4y ago
    Women already feel pressure to perform sexual favors in exchange for things. That is a problem with society and culture, quite separate from what we're talking about here. All adult women want is the empowerment to make decisions for their own bodies. It is theirs, after all.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      > Women already feel pressure to perform sexual favors in exchange for things. That is a problem with society and culture, quite separate from what we're talking about here. No, it's completely intertwined. Because these pressures exist in numerous contexts, we've developed both social norms and laws to limit the race to the bottom, overwhelmingly with the support of the women affected by those pressures. > All adult women want is the empowerment to make decisions for their own bodies. It is theirs, after all. Which women? More women identify as "conservative" than "liberal"--and even among the latter, legalizing sex work is not a majority (and possibly not even mainstream) position. My mom thinks sex work is very bad for society. It's probably one of the things my mom, all my aunts, and my wife's mom and aunts agree with, despite being from different countries and otherwise having quite different political views. Opposition to sex work is something that women tend to get the most riled up about, because ultimately its mothers and daughters that suffer from the consequences of sex work.
      - evgen 4y ago
        > Which women? More women identify as "conservative" than "liberal" Not even close to reality. More women identify as liberal than as conservative, more are registered Democrats than Republicans, and even within the Republican party women skew moderate rather than conservative. Among nonvoters the gender breakdown on various issues that can be easily identified as liberal or conservative shows that women favor policies that are generally considered liberal.
        rayiner 4y ago
        More women identify as conservative than liberal: https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-steady-conservatives-moderates-tie.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-stead..., with the plurality identifying as moderate. People think sex work should be “mainstreamed” (as stated by OP) would almost certainly identify as liberal; and I’d be surprised if even a majority of self-described liberals would support that position. Women tend to be less libertarian than men, and sometimes that breaks towards more liberal attitudes (they are more likely to favor generous social programs), and sometimes that breaks towards more conservative attitudes (they are more likely to oppose legalized prostitution and pornography). As of 2016, attitudes were closely divided on legalizing sex work overall (40% in favor, 43% against). But the gender breakdown was striking: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-men-women-poll https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11203740/prostitution-legal-me.... Men supported legalization 51-36, while women opposed it 30-50. Women similarly oppose pornography--just 25% find it morally acceptable, compared to 43% of men: https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/snqr1ifu40ogxi0zbyp-va.png https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Pro... Being a Democrat, of course, isn't dispositive of anything. My mom is a democrat, because she likes Obamacare and Anthony Fauci. But she's as socially conservative as any republican. (Like Black people: https://news.gallup.com/poll/112807/blacks-conservative-republicans-some-moral-issues.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/112807/blacks-conservative-repu...) Social libertarianism is championed mainly by the white college educated wing of the Democratic Party. But the party is ideologically diverse. For example, under 60% of Democrats say that “changing gender roles” has “made it easier for women to lead satisfying lives”: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/10/18/wide-partisan-gaps-in-u-s-over-how-far-the-country-has-come-on-gender-equality https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/10/18/wide-pa.... For Democrats without a college degree, it's under 50%. Sorry for the lengthy rant, but people projecting their views onto "women" (or another popular one these days, "people of color") has become a pet peeve of mine. When you say stuff like what "adult women want is the empowerment to make decisions for their own bodies" you’re making a libertarian argument, and statistically that’s going to be most appealing to white men. (That doesn’t make it wrong, but if you’re going to bring identity into it you don’t get to play fast and loose with what arguments different groups tend to find more compelling.)
  - fuj 4y ago
  - a4isms 4y ago
    - op00to 4y ago
      If a market free from regulation improves jobs, I would love to hear how that idea is reconciled with the existence of pimps. A pimp is the abusive free market solution to a regulated sex work market.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      > And please, your citation should not just justify your socially conservative talking point, but also falsify the converse perspective, which is that laws against sex work marginalize those who perform it, opening them up to exploitation from criminals and persecution from law enforcement. Laws against sex work do marginalize the people who perform it. It's a trade off. Liberals tend to place a strong emphasis on that harm to the minority, and devalue the harm to the majority from breaking down the taboo. Conservatives, meanwhile, tend to focus more on the benefit to the majority of the norms, and devalue the harm to sex workers. > I'd also like to understand what you're saying about minimum wage laws. > That's magical conservative thinking, the belief that an unregulated marketplace creates a positive sum game and not an exploitative economy. The belief that removing protection for labour creates better jobs for everyone, and not more exploitation of employees. The belief that removing regulations around commerce will get rid of fraud, not incentivize it. I'm just applying the same arguments that you're applying about minimum wage laws to sex work. In both cases, the laws make it illegal to do certain kinds of work--it limits individual freedom because some people may be willing to do that work--in order to prevent a race to the bottom and exploitation of the population as a whole. What you're describing as "magical conservative thinking" is, more accurately, "magical libertarian thinking." And liberals are quite often inclined to engage in such magical libertarian thinking--the idea that maximizing individual freedom maximizes social welfare--just in different contexts.
      - coding123 4y ago
        Can someone please make a memo somewhere that "magical thinking" is not an argument it's just a new thing people say to devalue someone's argument. I don't care what side people are on this phrase is WAAAAY overused.
  - op00to 4y ago
    What’s special about money that requires the government to ban consensual sex between two adults when moneys exchanged? I know the real reason is just plain Christian morality. But ignoring that shit, there is nothing inherently wrong or harmful about two adults having sex.
    - wincy 4y ago
      What about the risk of STDs to a man who goes down to the local brothel for his unknowing faithful wife? What if a man contracts HIV/AIDS and gives it to his wife? What if a woman who already has children with one man gets pregnant from a man she’s not married to, or a man gets another woman pregnant? Are these purely Christian morality or do they hint at very real underlying biological reasons total sexual freedom might be problematic to a society? These sorts of things do happen.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - op00to 4y ago
        > what if a woman who already has children with one man gets pregnant from a man she’s not married to Who cares? There's no law against this. > his unknowing faithful > a man gets another woman pregnant Your hypotheticals talk about people who are dishonest. The problem is inappropriate activity outside of a monogamous relationship. If one partner doesn't discuss their behavior with their other partner, the problem wasn't the sex worker, it is that they are not being honest about their activities. Your examples are moot anyway because regulated sex workers are tested every day, and are required to use condoms to protect against HIV. The risk of STD or pregnancy with a regulated sex worker are miniscule. It's far more risky for the husband to go to a bar and pick up someone randomly. > Are these purely Christian morality > total sexual freedom might be problematic to a society At least for now, we have sexual freedom in many jurisdictions all over the world, and society seems to be chugging along. Sexual activity isn't bringing the world to it's knees. (hee hee) The concept might be problematic to your vision of what society should look like, but the rest of us are enjoying life and letting others live their life choices.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    This is a 1950's era argument that has been proven wrong in many places already. Such as the Netherlands.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      > This is a 1950's era argument Sometimes societal evolution takes a wrong turn and embraces ideas that are maladaptive. For example, in the Netherlands, the Muslim immigrants who are demographically ascendant for the most part embrace these “1950s” ideas, and are outcompeting the Dutch folks who have embraced sexual liberalism.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        Which has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. Really, what an incredibly weak argument. The Netherlands has chosen to legalize prostitution, for good reasons which have proven in practice that the argument that you are making is invalid. That immigrants (the bulk of which joined since that legalization) are demographically ascendant and embrace those same ideas that you espouse is utterly irrelevant. The point is: there is ample evidence that the theory you push is wrong.
        rayiner 4y ago
        Cultures that decouple sex from procreative relationships are in decline. The literal commoditization of it through legalized prostitution is a merely a specific manifestation of a more general cultural attitude.
        jacquesm 4y ago
        > Cultures that decouple sex from procreative relationships are in decline. Ok, so now we're in 1890 or so. Really, this is beyond absurd. > The literal commoditization of it through legalized prostitution is a merely a specific manifestation of a more general cultural attitude. No, it means that you recognize that realistically prostitution is going to happen anyway, regardless of what you think or feel about it, so you try to make it as safe for the sex workers as you can and legalization is a very important step in that. I give up.
- zzzeek 4y ago
  you don't need to legalize prostitution in order to make sexual extortion illegal.
  - sp332 4y ago
    Yes you do, because otherwise the sex worker reporting the extortion to the police will also be admitting to a crime. So it won't happen.
    - throw_m239339 4y ago
      > Yes you do, because otherwise the sex worker reporting the extortion to the police will also be admitting to a crime. So it won't happen. No you don't, you just need to make buying sex and pimping illegal, you can do that without punishing the victims, what you call "sex workers" is a euphemism for sex trafficked women.
      - verve_rat 4y ago
        Not it is not. Plenty of people engage in sex work without being coerced or trafficked.
        throw_m239339 4y ago
        The overwhelming majority of prostitutes are sex trafficked women and children who were never given the choice. Legalizing prostitution leads to more trafficking. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/19/is-legalized-prostitution-safer/legalizing-prostitution-leads-to-more-trafficking https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/19/is-legalize...
        JamesBarney 4y ago
        That doesn't say anything about what percentage of sex workers were sex trafficked. The only stat it gives are what percentage of sex workers were sexually abused prior to entry. The best estimate I've seen for percentage of active sex workers that are currently being trafficked was between 3 and 4 %. https://aella.substack.com/p/what-percentage-of-sex-workers-in?s=r https://aella.substack.com/p/what-percentage-of-sex-workers-...
- Bancakes 4y ago
  - op00to 4y ago
    I think being a sex worker is probably more work than being a software developer at a FAANG. Certainly higher risk. Absolutely a real job. Better than, say, pharmaceutical rep.
    - Bancakes 4y ago
      - pavlov 4y ago
        In 18th century Europe this same argument was used to deprive actors of civil rights. Robespierre had to argue in 1789 that the French Republic should let actors and Jews vote: https://www.amis-robespierre.org/Robespierre-dans-le-texte-Sur-le https://www.amis-robespierre.org/Robespierre-dans-le-texte-S...
      - op00to 4y ago
        Jobs are required by law to be constructive to a personality and a family life? Is that some new Supreme Court decision or something? A job is a paid position. That’s the definition. You don’t get to make up your own to suit your own twisted view of reality. Hey, being a police officer often tears families apart, with police having far higher rates of divorce. That’s not constructive to family life. Is policing a real job?
        Bancakes 4y ago
        If a job is a paid position period, then why do you care about prostitutes' supposed rights and comforts?
      - nix23 4y ago
        What is your take on alcohol?
- nix23 4y ago
  Ehh she stalked the Meta employer. BTW: For example in Switzerland it is legal, you even have (in theory) to pay taxes. But still the problems are the same (human trafficking etc), nothing changed, and if you go to the police you have accidents like floating dead in a river a week later. Legalize it but make nothing to take the mafia away from it brings nothing, in fact it gives them a legal way to make money. Maybe it should be a state owned business only and not a private thing, sounds crazy but if you work for the state not even the mafia would dare to touch you, you have stable employment, insurance and medical services.
  - namelessoracle 4y ago
    Wasnt this the idea behind state owned liquor stores?
    - nix23 4y ago
      Yes, but liquor need's no protection ;) But i know what you mean, i really don't have a solution just some ideas, i just know that "just" legalize it did not change the life's (or just very few of them) to the better.
  - icambron 4y ago
    Doesn’t sound like she actually stalked anyone. She’s using the term colloquially to mean “I spent time browsing a stranger’s social media profile”, which is a common usage.
- warent 4y ago
- make3 4y ago
  wtf does this have to do with extortion being illegal. it could be a shakedown for money or whatever too
- some_random 4y ago
  The sex work you see on OnlyFans is already legal, the problem isn't legality it's the attitudes of social media companies, platforms, and payment processors.
- iKevinShah 4y ago
  This is also why "Big Tech" has to be mainstreamed and laws created to protect user accounts and provide a streamlined, regulated way to remove | ban | un-ban | reinstate accounts. We should not be letting "our systems" in Big Tech do their thing. Specially when it comes to a person's accounts
- coding123 4y ago
  Oh THIS is why.
carnitine 4y ago
Don’t think they’d be stupid enough to try, surely the victim would go straight to either the company or the media with black and white proof?
- azemetre 4y ago
  I would hope people feel empowered to go to the authorities or media, but all too often sex workers are heavily discriminated against. Sometimes going to the police can get them in trouble, going to the media may bring unnecessary attention to them and their family. I agree with the other comment about how we need legislation to ensure proper channels on how to get account access back or services. Far too often if you dare question say Google or Facebook your account may be banned for life with little retribution on your end. That's why these platforms need to be broken up or follow standards that could allow people to take their social graphs/data and go to other competitors.
hamiltonians 4y ago
elon musk

aresant 4y ago

It is mindboggling to me that HN will argue all day about the merits of a peer reviewed scientific paper and then accept ad nauseum that this PERFECTLY constructed viral story told on a podcast represents TRUTH EDIT - Downvoted? Do others accept this is true? Why?

itsoktocry 4y ago
Yeah, it's strange. This was a person riffing on a podcast, it's not even like there was some journalism involved. Just an interesting anecdote that may or may not be true.
treesknees 4y ago
There is an embedded Twitter video with the exact clip where the OF creator herself tells the story, it's not just a constructed headline. But I'll agree that the HN headline leaves out the word "says" which changes it a bit. We can't know for sure whether she's telling the truth about this.
- kamranjon 4y ago
  I think they are suggesting that this OF creator could just be making this story up
  - aresant 4y ago
    Correct.
  - treesknees 4y ago
    They edited their comment to remove the word "headline" after I commented, changing the direction of their comment from the article reporting it to the video content.
dntrkv 4y ago
If it’s negative press for FANG, it’s always true. That’s the HN way.

avthar 4y ago

Source clip: https://twitter.com/adam22/status/1527005564802600960?s=20&t=QtZGN7OYfnXasipeztyYcA https://twitter.com/adam22/status/1527005564802600960?s=20&t...

altairprime 4y ago
Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31436182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31436182

barelysapient 4y ago

FANG customer support: Level 1 - Start a thread on Hackernews or Twitter. Level 2 - Fuck'em.

warning26 4y ago
Now we know what course of action to suggest the next time someone posts "Ask HN: My [FAANG] account is locked"!
- shantnutiwari 4y ago
  Will it work for ugly people like me?
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Ugly male? No. Ugly female? Worth a shot.
  - bsedlm 4y ago
    sorry to say, but no. (or at the least, it's very highly unlikely)
durnygbur 4y ago
Talked with friends occasionally transporting packages in Central Europe for Amazon. In case they want to appeal some vague "fees" deducted from bank transfer, they have to call Amazon's office in Dublin and they're put on hold until they give up. Oh, and English only of course.
ethotool 4y ago
You have to stalk them first
zerr 4y ago
Same for Paypal.
thunkshift1 4y ago
This is funny/sad because it is true now

newaccount2021 4y ago

strikelaserclaw 4y ago

might be an exaggeration or false claim to get traffic to her of

pm90 4y ago
unlikely. Would be easy to disprove.
- fuj 4y ago
- etchalon 4y ago
  How would you disprove it? Ask literally every Meta employee whether they participated, and assume no one would lie about that?
  - Justsignedup 4y ago
    i got a clipboard, a checklist, and a navy blue shirt with pencils in the side pocket. we can make this inquiry happen. Also we can steal their servers all with the same outfit.
  - saddd 4y ago
    It says that each individual Meta employee had to personally appeal to have her specific Instagram account unblocked. Seems like it would be trivial for someone at Meta to verify. If she's not lying, she just completely threw those Meta employees under the bus (if they're still working there).
    - altdataseller 4y ago
      And so what if she threw them under the bus? What are the consequences of that, compared to the extra attention/traffic she just garnered?
      - robonerd 4y ago

mproud 4y ago

This is called corruption.

krageon 4y ago
If you read what actually happened you can see that all proper internal procedures were followed. Corruption heavily implies that something that exists for other people is (temporarily) removed, or some requirement is waived as a result of compensation. That is not what happened.
- GlassKingdom 4y ago
  It’s “corruption” by any credible meaning of the word. If the story is true then it’s a catastrophe for Meta.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- austinkhale 4y ago
  If internal procedures allow Meta employees to be paid (in cash or favors of any kind) to be internal champions for repeatedly resubmitting bans to the Integrity Team roulette appeals process, “proper” is the opposite of the word I would use to describe the practice.
  - altairprime 4y ago
    That’s how “friends and family” policies work, though: the company gives you perks to bestow upon your friends, so that they can trade their relationship with you for a benefit.
- enumjorge 4y ago
  She used sexual favors to get an employee to unban the account that shouldn’t have been banned in the first place. I doubt those are proper procedures as defined by Meta’s guidelines.
iancmceachern 4y ago

908B64B197 4y ago

These account bans should be handled by small claims courts. Plain and simple.

the_only_law 4y ago
Given how common they seemed to be handed out by algorithms, might have to expand the courts.

marban 4y ago

/Aside, I wonder how the Twitter blue check black market (~$10k) works from an 'organizational' perspective.

datalopers 4y ago
They’re rolling out a new pricing plan once Musk takes over: one handjob and then you choose between a horse or a blue checkmark
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  That is a horse of a different…I’ll show myself out.
- testplzignore 4y ago
  I understand the horse, but how do I give a handjob to a checkmark?
Jerrrry 4y ago
Pretty efficient market. Depending on your check mark, subscriber count, and audience, you can easily sell any blue checkmark for 1-10k. Access to the Twitter dashboard? 50k 0day account takeover - 150+k, rarely happens anymore
- marban 4y ago
  From what I've seen on some forums, they're not selling check marked accounts but actually provide one for your specific account.
  - praisewhitey 4y ago
    a couple of years ago Twitter rolled out the ability to transfer a bluecheck between accounts https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYfePxLUYAAoZj9.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYfePxLUYAAoZj9.png

jmbwell 4y ago

Turns out, it's not the creator of OnlyFans, but a "creator" /on/ OnlyFans. Also, an Instagram /account/ was reinstated, not all of Instagram.

warent 4y ago
Thanks for clarifying. I was actually thinking the founder of OnlyFans and admittedly have a really bad tendency about 25% of the time to only read headlines.
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago
  are there stats on this? >have a really bad tendency about 25% of the time to only read headlines.
jimmy2020 4y ago
should read this comment before reading the article
make3 4y ago
you seriously thought it was about reinstating all of Instagram?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dundermuffl1n 4y ago
Being a "creator" or "influencer" has pervaded our cultural ethos so deeply, you'd be in the minority for assuming that it's the creator of Onlyfans or that all of Instagram had to be reinstated. These are popular consumer brands, and colloquialism would prefer their "insta" or "instagram", rather than "instagram profile".
- MiddleEndian 4y ago
  I also assumed based on this title that it was the founder of OnlyFans and was underwhelmed by the actual article.

norswap 4y ago

They wouldn't have this issue if they allowed (but flagged for children, advertisers, people who don't opt in) NSFW content in the first place. It's allowed on Twitter, so why not on Instagram?

Ancalagon 4y ago
Seriously, Instagram is full of essentially soft core porn as it is.
bpodgursky 4y ago
Facebook makes over 20x as much money as Twitter, and it's not just on volume; they are vastly better at monetizing each of their ad slots. It's perfectly OK to hate Facebook as a platform or a concept, but their ad revenue team is very good their jobs, and I would be very hesitant to question their decision-making on what does and doesn't attract advertisers.

verisimi 4y ago

If its the corporate policy, that's fine, no? Its fine to ban or un-ban people. If corporate policy demands that infractions can be revoked by sex, and people agree to do it, I don't see the problem. This is not a legal issue. Its not a freedom of speech issue, which in any case can also bypassed by corporate policy.

fsociety 4y ago
It’s a social engineering attack in a way. I would not blame the OnlyFans creator but I would encourage silently letting the employee who did this go with severance pay. Imo long-term, companies should be legislated into having fair ban appeals, and enforced in transparency of why accounts are banned after they are a certain size. Then I would happily start debating the removal of these employee specialty services which allow this. I say this as someone who has used this power before for legitimate reasons. There should be official channels to do this with companies as large as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube etc.
- verisimi 4y ago
  Community guidelines are fine - they are all you need. Freedom of speech can be ignored - if the community guidelines say so. Similarly, if the guidelines are that if you 'offer up' you can be reinstated, and you are fine to do that, that's fine too? We're in the world of corporate policy now. Laws have nothing to do with! These are private corporations, and their policies determine what's right or wrong on their platforms.

durnygbur 4y ago

LinkedIn, Instagram, OnlyFans, Facebook, face tattoos. How it happens that this niche American cesspool gained global attention?

Radim 4y ago
"Demand generation". If you're able to whip the masses into a frenzy, the sky is the limit. Under the hood, our human propensity toward "storytelling" and social cohesion is both a blessing and our bane. People collectively go for convenient (but leaky) abstractions, leaders, influencers, fads. AKA the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. The cesspool is not specifically American. As long as the music plays, economy's touted "fundamentals" pretty much come down to ape psychology. The music just plays louder is some places than others, at the moment.

S_A_P 4y ago

Maybe this tactic will help me get my youtube account back. Any Googlers interested in a 45 year old graying software developer with a dad bod? But seriously, I wrote a post about my youtube account getting banned and without telling me what caused it just shut down my request for review. Sounds like in all of these companies you can either have a false positive AI flag you, someone decide they dont like you online and report you for something that isnt necessarily true/the case, and then you have some tech workers who either dont care enough to really fix problems or enjoying their fiefdoms and the power they wield at strangers.

panda88888 4y ago
I remember reading on hn that even googlers have trouble recovering their own old accounts…
judge2020 4y ago
YouTube loses more money paying someone to review your case than what they stand to make if you come back. Their insurance policy for this is the guarantee that any actually large creator getting banned will generate enough PR buzz for a fully-fledged Googler to be notified and raise an internal issue about it.
- wincy 4y ago
  Oh yeah, I remember Jordan Peterson got banned, then suddenly Joe Rogan was making a fuss on Twitter about it. Next day, boom everything back to normal.
- eloff 4y ago
  I would pay to have a human review my case and actually do something about it. When my wife lost access to her Instagram through a 2FA cockup, I paid over $100 and about $500 of my time to get the original phone number back through a friend. It was all for naught in the end. I used to defend Google around here back in the day when they were just ambiguously evil. Now I really hate Google and Meta. They both do these kinds of things with accounts, with apps, with "fact" policing, etc. I hope the government fucks them up.

josegonzalez 4y ago

The end goal is a bit different, but this reminds me of how some recruiters find my contact information across a ton of sites to try and contact me about changing jobs (some even find work contact info and contacting me there).

dymk 4y ago

Employee will probably be fired. While there’s nothing wrong with being a sex worker, I have a hard time respecting what this woman has done by throwing the employee under the bus. Seems like the only reason to share this story was to advertise her OF. All she had to do was say nothing, and Meta probably wouldn’t have found out. But it’s going to be very simple to look at the admin tool logs and see exactly who unbanned her account.

zht 4y ago
what? you see no issues with an employee of Meta getting accounts unbanned in exchange for sex?
- dymk 4y ago
  I never said that either. I think the whole situation is screwed up. The company’s internal tools being structured such that a random employee can unban an account without oversight is obviously a bad thing, and it’s an example of corruption. I’m also blown away at how short-sighted this woman is about the man’s employment, after he did her frankly a big favor in return for sex. Not to mention her account will just get banned again, given she admitted to it on video.
  - undecisive 4y ago
    Nah. Hopefully she isn't an idiot and has downloaded everything she cared about from facebook. But the fact is that we're all talking about this, inside tech spheres as well as outside. A literal real-life "who do I have to screw to get my stuff back?" moment. It means that no matter how little you respect what she has done, she may have just changed the world. Or, we'll forget in five minutes and Metabook will continue to ban people with impunity. Just my opinion, but someone being willing to lose something they sold their body to win back is reasonably respectable. Certainly they've done the world a big favour, whatever their motivations.
  - pvg 4y ago
    how short-sighted this woman is about the man’s employment Not sure you're assigning the responsibility to look after someone's career to the right person here.

starkd 4y ago

Did team Meta just find a new "fringe benefit" ?

irrational 4y ago

> Instagram has an algorithm that automatically shuts down accounts that are flagged or reported. That seems like a situation ripe for abuse. Just continually report any account you want taken down.

BoxOfRain 4y ago
This happened to my Facebook page, Meta is just completely oblivious to the notion of malicious reporting.
- fencepost 4y ago
  Meta is just completely oblivious to the notion of malicious reporting. I think you misspelled 'indifferent'

havblue 4y ago

I'm not sure that the meta employees thought of it as a quid pro quo when they hooked up with her. It isn't like Facebook could ban employees from sleeping with all Facebook users. So I suspect the actual fire-able offense was when they intervened on her behalf as a favor.

namelessoracle 4y ago
If they have a family and friends request to get things reviewed (as others have alluded too) but that person cant necessarily unban them himself. Is is inappropriate to use that process for a romantic partner? How do we know that the conversation was "i will have sex with you if you unban my account" (which is pretty clear quid pro quo), and not her establishing a relationship then asking for a favor from a "friend"? It seems like a pretty dark rabbit hole if Meta of all places has to figure out if this person has a relationship with a person for pragmatic reasons or not. How many relationships do you have in your life that exist to facilitate X/Y/Z. People trying to befriend people who are perceived to have some kind of power (be it economic, social, political, or in this case i guess technological?) is a very old tale.
- havblue 4y ago
  Yes, there's no way to tell that there was a clear quid pro quo. I would say that these employees could be fired for intervening on behalf of someone who says she had sex with them to get her account back, though. You can be "friends" with your boss at work but hr will want to know about it if a physical relationship starts because of conflicts of interest and an appearance of impropriety. Friendship won't be treated like a bribe but sex definitely could be, especially if one party says it is.
fire 4y ago
The most dire offense is probably the information leak of internal processes (both programmatic and business)
robonerd 4y ago
I suspect you're right. From the article: “We met up and like I fucked a couple of them and I was able to get my account back like two or three times,” she says. “ It sounds like she's saying she met up with more Meta employees than she actually fucked. So what happened with the others, did they get cold feet and back out of the deal? Maybe. Or maybe they they didn't realize there was a deal at all, and thought the meeting was simply a date that didn't pan out.

BonoboIO 4y ago

That some very "sophisticated" social engineering. Jokes aside. Maybe the story is true, maybe it's just fabricated to tell interesting stories. In an ideal world, there would be transparent governed by law policies what can and can not be shown or done. But facebook, instagram, google, tiktok ... will fight to their graves against transparency. It's bringing them money. Like the facebook/google ad deal, facebook maga money, googles ad dominance ...

lbriner 4y ago
I don't want to defend them because I hate Meta particularly but the problem with transparency or the conversation that most people want to have is that something that is worth like $50 to them turns into $1000 of time arguing with an account holder about "this doesn't violate", "yes it does". It is easier to stonewall. Like others have said, however, there could be some other mechanism, whether paid for or something for scenarios like this where her account was worth a lot to her and the money could even be refunded if they agree that the red flag was bogus. The other hard problem is that even the fact she works in the adult industry is enough for some people to flag the account. Lots of parents don't like their kids following insta stars who might lead them astray!
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  > Lots of parents don't like their kids following insta stars who might lead them astray! Human sexuality is one of the only realms where (to some) ignorance == virtue. At some point these kids are going to have to live in a world that includes sex workers, thirst trap Instagram accounts, and a range of human sexual behaviours. Can't keep them ignorant forever.

benjaminwootton 4y ago

Lost a Google account recently when they randomly started asking me to confirm a number which I no longer have access too and cannot remember. So annoying to have no support. Must setup something with a commercial provider soon.

MrBuddyCasino 4y ago

so there is a way

anoncow 4y ago

I will have to do what to get my website unblocked on the Sharing Debugger?! No wonder there is no easy way to reach support at Meta.

pretext-1 4y ago
They are busy people, have to set priorities ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

ibejoeb 4y ago

> Linktree is a one-stop-shop link that can link out to other websites from one webpage game changer.

imperistan 4y ago
you can only put a single link in your insta account so its a quick and simple way to link to multiple pages from your insta without building a webpage for it. It's used a lot, so in that sense it's a game changer
wutbrodo 4y ago
It's as much of a "game-changer" (or not) as bit.ly: a crucial workaround of artificial limitations on closed platforms.
- ibejoeb 4y ago
  I get it. I'm just laughing at the description. It sounds as if it could have been written in 1991.

gigatexal 4y ago

Replace Instagram account with any hard drug and then this is more common place. “[hard drug]-addict had sex with man to get more [hard drug].” Here I guess it’s a bit different cuz she’s an adult content creator … but the idea is more or less the same. What would the Kardashian’s do if they got cut off from Instagram?

wutbrodo 4y ago
The idea is absolutely not the same. She didn't want her Instagram back because she's addicted to insta as a user. She wanted it back because her social media presence is part of the business she runs. The analogue here is the casting couch, sans the implication that it's sprung unexpectedly on her.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  The hand wringing that you're implying with the casting couch analogy doesn't really follow since she's already engaged in that line of work. This is like giving the right people free promotional <whatever it is you make> because your booth got kicked out of the craft fair for a dumb reason.
  - wutbrodo 4y ago
    What hand-wringing? I even went out of my way to exclude the removal of agency implied by the term casting couch.
- robonerd 4y ago
  > She didn't want her Instagram back because she's addicted to insta as a user. She wanted it back because her social media presence is part of the business she runs. Are you sure there is a clear-cut line between the two? Which was she first, a sex worker or a habitual social media user? If she was first a social media addict, then it seems conceivable that she found this line of work because it was adjacent to social media, a straight forward way to turn her social media addiction into a job.

zip1234 4y ago

Meta employees can put a ticket in on behalf of family and friends to get an account unbanned if they think it was done in error. It basically just is a higher priority than normal tickets that users file themselves. My guess is that was what the employee did.

notacoward 4y ago
IIRC it was called "oops" or something like that, but it turned into a black hole about half way through my tenure there.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

I mean anyone who works for Facebook already has severely compromised morals, so I wouldn't be surprised if they are engaging in such activities.

BenoitP 4y ago

Is this going to get flagged like the one 5 hours ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31445380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31445380

coding123 4y ago
So that's kinda proof that FB employees are being told to flag the story to try to bury it. I hope HN prevents this one from that fate. However, I did notice that it dropped off the front page very quickly.

BoxOfRain 4y ago

If anyone who works for Meta is in this thread, can you tell me why my Facebook page got unpublished for content rule violations, the strike got reversed after we challenged the blatently incorrect violation, but is still unpublished and invisible to anyone but the admins? This behaviour on the part of Meta completely ruined what was quite a nice little community and I've not been able to get a satisfying explantion for this inconsistency. 'We realised the decision that got your page unpublished was wrong and reversed it, but we're still keeping your page unpublished' seems massively contradictory to me. The admins of the page (myself included) have developed our own app pretty much out of spite to replace the Facebook page so it's not the end of the world, but I'd love to know what's going on behind the scenes that such a state is even possible for a page. It feels like there's something pretty fundamentally wrong with how Facebook handles page moderation.

ugjka 4y ago
Do you pay Facebook? If not, you mean nothing...
- BoxOfRain 4y ago
  I'm well aware, their long history of shabby treatment towards our page actually meant our own app has been in development for a while (on and off around our proper jobs and the aftermath of a health crisis). I'd just like some insight into whatever Kafkaesque process lead to this happening, it's morbid curiosity more than anything.
  - ugjka 4y ago
    It is a liability for them to tell you anything
tablespoon 4y ago
Facebook doesn't care about what you want, they're only there to exploit you. I got a taste of this when I (unsuccessfully) tried to fix a grossly inaccurate situation with Facebook places (the places for two very different schools were merged, and any attempt to create a new place to fix it would quickly get incorrectly auto-merged). I discovered a large Facebook-endorsed community of people working for free to try to fix Facebook's places data without any special tools or support (might have been this https://www.facebook.com/editorcommunity/ https://www.facebook.com/editorcommunity/). People would just bang their heads constantly against Facebook's systems, and get nowhere, even though there were Facebook employees managing the group. I joined for a time, never got my issues resolved, and eventually just had to quit because it was too frustrating. It was just offensive how much effort those people where volunteering and how little help Facebook would give them to be successful at helping Facebook.

shadowtree 4y ago

dang taking note ;) /pleasedontbanme

soleposition 4y ago
dougmsmith 4y ago

908B64B197 4y ago

At least it was only to get an account unbanned, not some other favors [0] [1]. [0] https://usdailyreport.com/2020/12/10/christine-fang-eric-swalwell-tulsi-gabbard-chinese-spy-donald-trump-kr-tucker-carlson_n_12571.html https://usdailyreport.com/2020/12/10/christine-fang-eric-swa... [1] https://nypost.com/2020/12/08/suspected-chinese-spy-slept-with-courted-us-politicians-report/ https://nypost.com/2020/12/08/suspected-chinese-spy-slept-wi...

lucasyvas 4y ago

If it wasn't for the dangerous precedent, I probably wouldn't have a problem with this - it's definitely a bizarre transaction to me though.

analyst74 4y ago

This is wild, I remember even a bunch of very motivated and persistent YouTube employees couldn't remove a racist song calling for violence against Asians. Does Instagram have much less red tape on content moderations than YouTube?

nikolay 4y ago

It fascinates me how now everybody's a "creator" once of a sudden, which erodes the meaning of the word... at least use "maker"! Anyway, this incident shows how ridiculous the Big Tech is with providing no support and no means to dispute their wrongdoing - people are forced to do crazy things like these just to get their accounts back!