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I deleted my Facebook account in 2011. After finding out how much critical neighborhood information I have been missing, I finally registered a new Facebook acc

I deleted my Facebook account in 2011. After finding out how much critical neighborhood information I have been missing, I finally registered a new Facebook account fifteen years later to follow my neighborhood groups. A month later, the account was suspended for supposedly breaking guidelines. I never posted a single message, never reacted to any posts. They then required me to upload a video scan of my face to prove I was a person. We aren’t quite at the end of the internet, but man I can really see the end of this journey coming sometime soon.

prophesi 9mo ago
Had a similar experience after rejoining a few years ago. My account wasn't suspended for breaking guidelines AFAIK, but rather flagged as a suspicious account that required an upload of my face and driver's license. I think the account still exists in this limbo state because I'd rather not upload all of that to Facebook, and yet still not able to login to request for the account to be deleted.
- monksy 9mo ago
  That won't guarentee that you get your account back. Many times it's used to permaban you later.
  - octoberfranklin 9mo ago
    This is the big problem. We used to have a balance of power between the huge megaplatforms: they were the gatekeepers, but the worst punishment they could impose was forcing you to make a new account. Because they couldn't reliably tell us apart. This got nuked by the combination of two things: 1. Really good facial recognition 2. Everybody owning a bootloader-locked device with a front-facing camera (so you can't splice in FaceFusion to defeat #1). This is what made permabans possible. And it has upset the delicate balance that made things tolerable previously.
jacobsenscott 9mo ago
FB/Discord/etc were never the internet. They were walled gardens you could enter via the internet. This could be a revitalization of the internet - pushing people back to decentralized ways of communications.
- cheschire 9mo ago
  Perhaps you may have not read about how Iran is moving to a whitelisted internet. Or perhaps you believe this will not happen in your country. However, “think of the children” will always result in more restriction in western countries, not less. We are watching countries prove that it works to isolate from each other. Europe is not isolating from America in exactly the same way, but is isolating business processes from American services. We are not on the cusp of the end of the internet, but the cliff sure seems in view to me.
  - owebmaster 9mo ago
    > Perhaps you may have not read about how Iran is moving to a whitelisted internet. Or perhaps you believe this will not happen in your country. I hope for it to happen in my country, with local companies and developers competing to create the new social networks. The current arrangement fine foreign entities too much power.
  - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
    > perhaps you believe this will not happen in your country. That would hurt billionaires in America, so I'm not too worried about that gaining traction in my country. Even if it ultimately becomes the next superpower regime. More relevantly, I wonder of such restrictions would impede the First Amendment even if they did want to try.
snohobro 9mo ago
Ironically, this may be one of the many straws that breaks the proverbial internet camel’s back. We all wax and wane about the old internet, the pre-homogenized, non-corporate, Wild West internet. Perhaps these constant restrictions will finally spur us to create our own spaces again Our own little groups that exist independent of the corpo-sphere. The only reason ‘the way things used to be’ went away was because the new thing was convenient. Well, now it isn’t anymore. So let’s just go back to the old thing.
- ssl-3 9mo ago
  I yearn for the days of yore when a few of us would co-lo some boxes at a small local ISP we were friendly with, where we'd get to take advantage of their always-on and (at the time) blazing-fast T1 connectivity. It was low-cost for everyone, and we'd host our own services for whatever was useful to us and our friend groups. On the other hand: It was kind of awful when even my dialup access would get screwed up because someone's IRC server got DDoS'd -- again -- and clogged up the pipes. --- These days, the local ISPs are mostly gone. But the pipes are bigger -- it's easy for many of us to get gigabit+ connections at home. Unfortunately, the botnets are also bigger. How do we get back to what we had?
  - elevation 9mo ago
    Compete with facebook in an area you can actually win. Don't try to be all of a mobile messenger, news feed, telephony platform, marketplace, forum, async messaging... just do one of those things well for a group of users (potentially around a focus.) Piggy back off of an existing community that has already built trust -- for instance, build a forum for a local activity that often attracts 10+ years of participation and involves equipment. Your board will become the best place for users (who already trust one another) to swap used gear, discuss local venue closures, etc. Adopt moderation metrics that sustain your community (don't let bullies and spammers spoil everyone's experience.) In 10 years, you can completely replace larger platforms as the community of choice.
    - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
elevation 9mo ago
I helped an elderly woman create her first FB account. She'd just lost her husband and wanted to notify his friends about his upcoming memorial service. She knew their names but didn't have contact information. We created the account from an Apple device, registering from her home cable modem IP, giving FB her cellphone number and ISP issued email address — all strong signals of consumer authenticity. But after she added five of her relatives within half an hour, her account was locked for suspicious activity. There was an appeal button; she was asked to take a picture of her face from many angles and upload ID. She gave them everything they asked for, but when Facebook reviewed the appeal, they closed her account permanently.
- alex1138 9mo ago
  Mark Zuckerberg, folks. It matters when his default philosophy is "They trust me dumb fucks". Copying Snapchat 9 times is more of a priority than account security. He wasn't "making a good point". He's a malicious asshole who deserved jail years ago
  - uncletscollie 9mo ago
    [dead]
- retired 9mo ago
  It sure beats the Reddit system where you think you are interacting with people, only to find out a couple of days later that your fresh account is shadow-banned and nobody is seeing your comments and that none of your likes went through. At least Facebook tells you that you are banned.
  - kps 9mo ago
    Reddit and HN.
    - alex1138 9mo ago
      I wasn't aware HN had it, but considering the number of [flagged] by people who work for big tech I'm sure some people actually posting truthful things have ended up on the shadowban list
lp4v4n 9mo ago
My friend has a restaurant and showed me the ad he wanted to promote on Instagram about a pizza coupon was suspended for breaking the guidelines, they mentioned gambling or something. I was quite impressed. When you see that one of the "magnificent 7" is dysfunctional to that level, it's hard not to think we're living the last decades of American economic hegemony, by now propelled mostly by inertial monopolies than anything else.
- elevation 9mo ago
  The big ad networks want a cut from business users and will actively suppress posts from business accounts that haven't paid up. But instead of paying Instagram for reach, consider taking the same budget and spending it delivering samples and coupons to other local businesses mid/late morning. Bonus points if you make the coupons unique for each delivery so you can track which local businesses are your biggest fans. Office managers are generally receptive to this kind of cold call and you can leave a catering menu. Catering gigs can keep your kitchen busy during the off hours.
  - nondrool 9mo ago
    > The big ad networks want >> unique for each delivery so you can track
- dimgl 9mo ago
  > it's hard not to think we're living the last decades of American economic hegemony Bit of a stretch to correlate this with Instagram suspending some guy
  - DaSHacka 9mo ago
    You see, they had to start at the conclusion and work backwards to somehow justify how they "arrived" at such a take.
  - paradox460 9mo ago
    Remember, we've been in "late stage capitalism" for over 100 years
johnnyanmac 9mo ago
Yeah, same here. I tried logging in years back and they wanted my driver's license. My last comment must have been in 2013 or so. I don't see it as the journey's end. But it's gonna be a much quieter road if most people don't walk away from this stuff. Maybe that's for the best.
erghjunk 9mo ago
I have a similar story. I quit in like 2016 or so and 9ish years later I wanted to shop for a used car for my oldest kid. I know already, of course, that Facebook now holds a monopoly on peer to peer sales of goods like that so I tried to make a new Facebook account. I was denied at the creation and told I had to try again with a video of my face (which I begrudgingly did) at which point I was denied AGAIN and told there was no appeals process.
- PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
  > a monopoly on peer to peer sales of goods like that I don't know ... around these parts (Santa Fe/ABQ) while Marketplace is very popular, Craigslist continues to be widely used for this, especially since an ever growing number of younger people are not on Facebook (either at all, or not regularly).
  - erghjunk 9mo ago
    I would be just fine with a return to Craigslist but it's still mostly useless in my neck of the woods despite once being the main (digital) tool for p2p sales.
guerrilla 9mo ago
Twitter (before Musk) and Facebook did the same thing to me... and that was a long time ago. Discord tried to do it to me a few months ago but I refused, contacted support instead. Eventually they made it work but it took forever. Lucky for me I hate Discord so tried to avoid it anyway.
zer0zzz 9mo ago
I had the same experience when I deleted my FB then years later reregistered one using the same email. I think thats kind of a good thing in some ways, specifically in the FB case because I wouldnt want someone to go online saying they are me when they are not.
paranoidrobot 9mo ago
Instagram did a similar thing for me back in 2016-ish. A family member had been sharing some photos they were taking, but only on Instagram. So I signed up an account, verified via email and phone number. I wasn't initially able to find the family member's account. A week later after I got the spelling of their username right, Instagram popped up "Your account has been suspended". They then sent me an email saying I needed to take a photo of myself holding government ID, and a piece of paper with a hand-written code they supplied, plus a close-up photo of said government ID. No way was I supplying all that just to be able to browse some photos.
cryptoegorophy 9mo ago
Do you not buy/sell on marketplace? I guess this might be a wrong website to ask such questions.
- cheschire 9mo ago
  I browsed for a while but didn’t see anything worthwhile. I’ve had friends coordinate for me in the past for a couple things but honestly eBay is still my go to.
dyauspitr 9mo ago
I’m actually excited for it. We have a lot of infrastructure already in place so I’m looking forward to the internet being a deanonymized space where people watch what they say and there’s accountability.
- lambdas 9mo ago
  Those pesky whistleblowers, journalists, and political dissidents have had it good for far too long. They’ve needed taking down a peg
  - dyauspitr 9mo ago
    That’s a strawman. It’s such a tiny aspect of the what the majority of activity on the internet is that it’s irrelevant to any large scale discussion of the internet.
    - Nasrudith 9mo ago
      Just like how school shooters are irrelevant to any large scale discussion of education? It is very relevant and impactful and you can't just hand-wave it away by saying percentages mean it doesn't count.
mycall 9mo ago
Until use of TCP/IP or DNS requires uploading a video scan, the internet will keep on.
almosthere 9mo ago
Try to remind your neighbors that you can go outside and talk to people to share news of the hood
sbinnee 9mo ago
It sounds like they would like the idea of Worldcoin[1] very much (I want to make sure I am being sarcastic. I hate the idea). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)

prophesi 9mo ago

Had a similar experience after rejoining a few years ago. My account wasn't suspended for breaking guidelines AFAIK, but rather flagged as a suspicious account that required an upload of my face and driver's license. I think the account still exists in this limbo state because I'd rather not upload all of that to Facebook, and yet still not able to login to request for the account to be deleted.

monksy 9mo ago
That won't guarentee that you get your account back. Many times it's used to permaban you later.
- octoberfranklin 9mo ago
  This is the big problem. We used to have a balance of power between the huge megaplatforms: they were the gatekeepers, but the worst punishment they could impose was forcing you to make a new account. Because they couldn't reliably tell us apart. This got nuked by the combination of two things: 1. Really good facial recognition 2. Everybody owning a bootloader-locked device with a front-facing camera (so you can't splice in FaceFusion to defeat #1). This is what made permabans possible. And it has upset the delicate balance that made things tolerable previously.

jacobsenscott 9mo ago

FB/Discord/etc were never the internet. They were walled gardens you could enter via the internet. This could be a revitalization of the internet - pushing people back to decentralized ways of communications.

cheschire 9mo ago
Perhaps you may have not read about how Iran is moving to a whitelisted internet. Or perhaps you believe this will not happen in your country. However, “think of the children” will always result in more restriction in western countries, not less. We are watching countries prove that it works to isolate from each other. Europe is not isolating from America in exactly the same way, but is isolating business processes from American services. We are not on the cusp of the end of the internet, but the cliff sure seems in view to me.
- owebmaster 9mo ago
  > Perhaps you may have not read about how Iran is moving to a whitelisted internet. Or perhaps you believe this will not happen in your country. I hope for it to happen in my country, with local companies and developers competing to create the new social networks. The current arrangement fine foreign entities too much power.
- johnnyanmac 9mo ago
  > perhaps you believe this will not happen in your country. That would hurt billionaires in America, so I'm not too worried about that gaining traction in my country. Even if it ultimately becomes the next superpower regime. More relevantly, I wonder of such restrictions would impede the First Amendment even if they did want to try.

snohobro 9mo ago

Ironically, this may be one of the many straws that breaks the proverbial internet camel’s back. We all wax and wane about the old internet, the pre-homogenized, non-corporate, Wild West internet. Perhaps these constant restrictions will finally spur us to create our own spaces again Our own little groups that exist independent of the corpo-sphere. The only reason ‘the way things used to be’ went away was because the new thing was convenient. Well, now it isn’t anymore. So let’s just go back to the old thing.

ssl-3 9mo ago
I yearn for the days of yore when a few of us would co-lo some boxes at a small local ISP we were friendly with, where we'd get to take advantage of their always-on and (at the time) blazing-fast T1 connectivity. It was low-cost for everyone, and we'd host our own services for whatever was useful to us and our friend groups. On the other hand: It was kind of awful when even my dialup access would get screwed up because someone's IRC server got DDoS'd -- again -- and clogged up the pipes. --- These days, the local ISPs are mostly gone. But the pipes are bigger -- it's easy for many of us to get gigabit+ connections at home. Unfortunately, the botnets are also bigger. How do we get back to what we had?
- elevation 9mo ago
  Compete with facebook in an area you can actually win. Don't try to be all of a mobile messenger, news feed, telephony platform, marketplace, forum, async messaging... just do one of those things well for a group of users (potentially around a focus.) Piggy back off of an existing community that has already built trust -- for instance, build a forum for a local activity that often attracts 10+ years of participation and involves equipment. Your board will become the best place for users (who already trust one another) to swap used gear, discuss local venue closures, etc. Adopt moderation metrics that sustain your community (don't let bullies and spammers spoil everyone's experience.) In 10 years, you can completely replace larger platforms as the community of choice.
  - johnnyanmac 9mo ago

elevation 9mo ago

I helped an elderly woman create her first FB account. She'd just lost her husband and wanted to notify his friends about his upcoming memorial service. She knew their names but didn't have contact information. We created the account from an Apple device, registering from her home cable modem IP, giving FB her cellphone number and ISP issued email address — all strong signals of consumer authenticity. But after she added five of her relatives within half an hour, her account was locked for suspicious activity. There was an appeal button; she was asked to take a picture of her face from many angles and upload ID. She gave them everything they asked for, but when Facebook reviewed the appeal, they closed her account permanently.

alex1138 9mo ago
Mark Zuckerberg, folks. It matters when his default philosophy is "They trust me dumb fucks". Copying Snapchat 9 times is more of a priority than account security. He wasn't "making a good point". He's a malicious asshole who deserved jail years ago
- uncletscollie 9mo ago
  [dead]
retired 9mo ago
It sure beats the Reddit system where you think you are interacting with people, only to find out a couple of days later that your fresh account is shadow-banned and nobody is seeing your comments and that none of your likes went through. At least Facebook tells you that you are banned.
- kps 9mo ago
  Reddit and HN.
  - alex1138 9mo ago
    I wasn't aware HN had it, but considering the number of [flagged] by people who work for big tech I'm sure some people actually posting truthful things have ended up on the shadowban list

lp4v4n 9mo ago

My friend has a restaurant and showed me the ad he wanted to promote on Instagram about a pizza coupon was suspended for breaking the guidelines, they mentioned gambling or something. I was quite impressed. When you see that one of the "magnificent 7" is dysfunctional to that level, it's hard not to think we're living the last decades of American economic hegemony, by now propelled mostly by inertial monopolies than anything else.

elevation 9mo ago
The big ad networks want a cut from business users and will actively suppress posts from business accounts that haven't paid up. But instead of paying Instagram for reach, consider taking the same budget and spending it delivering samples and coupons to other local businesses mid/late morning. Bonus points if you make the coupons unique for each delivery so you can track which local businesses are your biggest fans. Office managers are generally receptive to this kind of cold call and you can leave a catering menu. Catering gigs can keep your kitchen busy during the off hours.
- nondrool 9mo ago
  > The big ad networks want >> unique for each delivery so you can track
dimgl 9mo ago
> it's hard not to think we're living the last decades of American economic hegemony Bit of a stretch to correlate this with Instagram suspending some guy
- DaSHacka 9mo ago
  You see, they had to start at the conclusion and work backwards to somehow justify how they "arrived" at such a take.
- paradox460 9mo ago
  Remember, we've been in "late stage capitalism" for over 100 years

johnnyanmac 9mo ago

Yeah, same here. I tried logging in years back and they wanted my driver's license. My last comment must have been in 2013 or so. I don't see it as the journey's end. But it's gonna be a much quieter road if most people don't walk away from this stuff. Maybe that's for the best.

erghjunk 9mo ago

I have a similar story. I quit in like 2016 or so and 9ish years later I wanted to shop for a used car for my oldest kid. I know already, of course, that Facebook now holds a monopoly on peer to peer sales of goods like that so I tried to make a new Facebook account. I was denied at the creation and told I had to try again with a video of my face (which I begrudgingly did) at which point I was denied AGAIN and told there was no appeals process.

PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
> a monopoly on peer to peer sales of goods like that I don't know ... around these parts (Santa Fe/ABQ) while Marketplace is very popular, Craigslist continues to be widely used for this, especially since an ever growing number of younger people are not on Facebook (either at all, or not regularly).
- erghjunk 9mo ago
  I would be just fine with a return to Craigslist but it's still mostly useless in my neck of the woods despite once being the main (digital) tool for p2p sales.

guerrilla 9mo ago

Twitter (before Musk) and Facebook did the same thing to me... and that was a long time ago. Discord tried to do it to me a few months ago but I refused, contacted support instead. Eventually they made it work but it took forever. Lucky for me I hate Discord so tried to avoid it anyway.

zer0zzz 9mo ago

I had the same experience when I deleted my FB then years later reregistered one using the same email. I think thats kind of a good thing in some ways, specifically in the FB case because I wouldnt want someone to go online saying they are me when they are not.

paranoidrobot 9mo ago

Instagram did a similar thing for me back in 2016-ish. A family member had been sharing some photos they were taking, but only on Instagram. So I signed up an account, verified via email and phone number. I wasn't initially able to find the family member's account. A week later after I got the spelling of their username right, Instagram popped up "Your account has been suspended". They then sent me an email saying I needed to take a photo of myself holding government ID, and a piece of paper with a hand-written code they supplied, plus a close-up photo of said government ID. No way was I supplying all that just to be able to browse some photos.

cryptoegorophy 9mo ago

Do you not buy/sell on marketplace? I guess this might be a wrong website to ask such questions.

cheschire 9mo ago
I browsed for a while but didn’t see anything worthwhile. I’ve had friends coordinate for me in the past for a couple things but honestly eBay is still my go to.

dyauspitr 9mo ago

I’m actually excited for it. We have a lot of infrastructure already in place so I’m looking forward to the internet being a deanonymized space where people watch what they say and there’s accountability.

lambdas 9mo ago
Those pesky whistleblowers, journalists, and political dissidents have had it good for far too long. They’ve needed taking down a peg
- dyauspitr 9mo ago
  That’s a strawman. It’s such a tiny aspect of the what the majority of activity on the internet is that it’s irrelevant to any large scale discussion of the internet.
  - Nasrudith 9mo ago
    Just like how school shooters are irrelevant to any large scale discussion of education? It is very relevant and impactful and you can't just hand-wave it away by saying percentages mean it doesn't count.

mycall 9mo ago

Until use of TCP/IP or DNS requires uploading a video scan, the internet will keep on.

almosthere 9mo ago

Try to remind your neighbors that you can go outside and talk to people to share news of the hood

sbinnee 9mo ago

It sounds like they would like the idea of Worldcoin[1] very much (I want to make sure I am being sarcastic. I hate the idea). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)