[HN Gopher] How you can get banned from Facebook permanently
___________________________________________________________________
How you can get banned from Facebook permanently
Author : GNU_James
Score : 125 points
Date : 2021-01-23 17:09 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.elliott.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.elliott.org)
| pmlnr wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > 1) Facebook is a free service. Users are not customers. And
| although Birch was outraged by the "terrible customer service" he
| received from Facebook, he shouldn't have been. Facebook is
| providing an online social community free of charge to the user.
| The Facebook Team is not a "customer service team," and users
| should not expect the type of personalized attention a complaint
| would receive from a company of which they are actually paying
| customers.
|
| > 2) When you sign up with Facebook, you agree to its terms and
| conditions. If you violate any of those terms, you can get banned
| -- with no clear-cut methods of appealing the decision.
|
| > 3) Facebook doesn't owe you an account. There are no current
| laws that require Facebook to allow anyone to participate.
|
| Please try to make your friends, family, circles understand this,
| and offer an alternative by setting up interest based services
| for them. Let that be a messaging service (Prosody XMPP server +
| Conversations on Android or Siskin on iOS); an image board
| (Pixelfed); a file sharing service (nextcloud); an email server
| (mail-in-a-box); we can do it, we can move them. Appeal to them
| being their friendly neighbourhood IT person/sysadmin, and that
| if they have any problems, they know an actual face to turn to
| with their problems.
|
| The network effect is somewhat overrated in the light of
| interests, especially niche ones. Give people what they want -
| image of grandkids for grantparents, etc - but in exchange, ask
| them to use your service.
| wslack wrote:
| Seems like a good situation for an Oversight Board appeal.
| vsskanth wrote:
| the bigger question is if they stop collecting data on you if
| you're banned ? ;)
| CursedUrn wrote:
| Of course not
| oceanplexian wrote:
| If so sign me up. I quit using their platform years ago and
| haven't missed it. But I'm sure my information is still being
| collected anyways.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Fairly certain they have to in the EU. Given that you always
| have a right to have your data deleted I assume they'll just
| delete the account after a ban.
| 908087 wrote:
| This means that you can also be permanently banned from using
| hardware you purchased if you were naive enough to believe you
| actually owned the Oculus headset you gave Facebook money for.
| dessant wrote:
| Facebook appears to store the personal data of banned people
| indefinitely, you can log in a year from now and you'll be
| greeted with the same message. There is a link to download your
| account data, but they offer no option to permanently delete it.
|
| Stripping you from your right to exercise control over your
| personal data is illegal in the EU.
| judge2020 wrote:
| They don't stop you from exercising control over your personal
| data. Try sending an email or formal legal request to FB and
| see if your data is still there in 31 days.
| dessant wrote:
| If true, that practice is also illegal in the EU, because
| requesting account deletion must be as accessible as creating
| an account.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| You can permanently delete your facebook account:
| https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674
| coldtea wrote:
| Does that delete the data?
| saddlerustle wrote:
| "After 30 days, your account and all your information will
| be permanently deleted"
| coldtea wrote:
| And does that delete the data?
| paozac wrote:
| Instagram doesn't seem to. I deleted my account a few
| years ago, but they still notify me with the updated
| terms of use. I assume my account is still there,
| regardless of GDPR.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| The last published DPC audit found that it does [1].
| There's not much reason to subject themselves to huge
| fines and lie about it, a very small fraction of facebook
| users delete anything.
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20171218060100/https://ww
| w.datap...
| jtokoph wrote:
| If they no longer have your information are you no longer
| banned? Is data about your ban deleted?
| [deleted]
| dessant wrote:
| You cannot access the link to request permanent deletion once
| your Facebook account is banned. The web is full of unsolved
| threads with people trying to find a way to permanently
| delete a _banned_ Facebook account.
| eingaeKaiy8ujie wrote:
| >Please stand by, while we are checking your browser... >Please
| turn JavaScript on and reload the page.
|
| No, thanks.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| Now that they have tied Oculus accounts to Facebook accounts,
| they may have to revisit this policy of arbitrarily banning
| accounts from all services unilaterally and without explanation.
| The headsets from Oculus are not inexpensive and I imagine some
| people end up downloading a fair number of applications for their
| equipment. Regardless of their click-through terms of service,
| they will have a more traditional relationship with the Oculus
| customers.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| > She is a consumer advocate... and psychotherapist
|
| I guess you would have to be, in that line of work, wouldn't you?
| croes wrote:
| "Unfortunately, for safety and security reasons, we can't provide
| additional information as to why your account was disabled. We
| appreciate your understanding, as this decision is final." Could
| not have been better formulated by Kafka.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Well, yes, superficially a lot of rejections feel like Kafka in
| that sense.
|
| The difference is, of course, that Kafka's protagonist gets
| stabbed to death after his conviction.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > Unfortunately, for safety and security reasons, we can't
| provide additional information as to why your account was
| disabled. We appreciate your understanding, as this decision is
| final. (Facebook team)
|
| Exactly this should be outlawed. Every action of this kind should
| be accompanied with clear and very specific (including time and
| date) specification of the reason.
|
| > What kind of %#*& customer service is this that it takes over
| five months to even try to get ahold of a real human being to
| help with a problem!!!! This is horrible.
|
| As well as this - not a single banning/unbanning/whatever
| decision should be automated. An automatic system can only pint
| to what is suspicious.
|
| > And the unique nature of Facebook makes this type of case
| impossible to mediate.
|
| It is not unique. And everything has been unique at first anyway.
| We just need to define and regulate this kind of service.
|
| Nevertheless users who are stupid enough to actually rely on
| Facebook without having backup communication channels and backup
| picture storage just have to be educated about this is stupid.
| Whenever somebody says they want to communicate via the Messenger
| I don't even consider this because this is just insane, even to
| install this app is crazy. Sadly, too many people say this
| nowadays.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Have you never been involved in an effort to counter spam,
| either via email or comments?
|
| Leaving aside how incredibly illegal your proposal is, it's
| also unworkable and would make the internet worse if even
| attempted.
|
| If I have to communicate to every bad actor how I identified
| them as a bad actor, that only helps them sidestep my
| prevention mechanisms.
|
| I'm sure it can be frustrating to face a blank wall, but
| fortunately, Facebook is a waste of time that nobody should be
| using anyway.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Whatever. It is known that it often is enough to reach a real
| human at Facebook or Google to find out it was a false
| positive and unban you. But actually reaching a real human
| who would check your case consciously and competently is
| extremely hard - you have to know one personally or pay some
| agency (the lowest price quote I have seen was $500) and hope
| for the best.
|
| What actually happens here (as well as on YouTube with
| copyright stuff) is a wild misuse of AI technologies like
| giving people life sentences just because they had a weird
| accent or suspicious face - perhaps deploying such measures
| on global scale could catch a lot of murderers but
| undoubtedly it would also ruin many innocent people and this
| can hardly be considered OK.
|
| So we don't even have to regulate Facebook in particular,
| just regulate large-scale AI usage.
| ouid wrote:
| are you saying that it's illegal to regulate facebook?
| mancerayder wrote:
| > If I have to communicate to every bad actor how I
| identified them as a bad actor, that only helps them sidestep
| my prevention mechanisms.
|
| If an innocent gets banned and there's no explanation or way
| to reach anyone, you're Josef in The Trial.
|
| Have programmers and marketing people in the Valley ever read
| any Kafka or Orwell?
| mc32 wrote:
| If they have, it would seem they've been taken as a
| template rather than lesson in authority and bureaucracy
| gone wrong.
|
| Or they just ignore the likeness and go about as if
| nothing.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I dislike the direction for society you are proposing. Each
| bad actor should absolutely know how and why they are
| identified as a bad actor. How else could they possibly even
| attempt to defend themselves as not bad actors. The same kind
| of idiocy is allowed in banks now under the guise of BSA. The
| only difference is, banks typically face much harder
| restrictions and are actually heavily regulated. For that
| reason, I believe the parent's post makes more sense than a
| blanket 'it is too hard for us to do it'.
|
| In short, you are proposing that we penalize good actors for
| actions of bad actors for no other reason that it creates
| inconvenience for a platform. That is not acceptable.
| jccooper wrote:
| Well, the good actors misclassified as bad actors should be
| told, so they can fix it. The bad actors should be told
| nothing, because that only helps them become more effective
| bad actors.
|
| How you differentiate, I dunno. That's the problem.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am not certain this is the actual problem though. It is
| not about misclassification. It is about the underlying
| system.
|
| Would you argue that a person accused of crime X should
| be told nothing about the nature of their transgression?
| To me it sounds very problematic.
| Bedgeseb wrote:
| You'd fit in perfectly in an oppressive nazi or communist
| regime.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| How exactly does it help when Facebook tells a bad actor
| what part of the publicly available guidelines were
| violated?
|
| Why can't Facebook just have a hotline/chat that can
| verify a user's identity and tell them more, preferrable
| in less than 5 months of spamming their email?
|
| And in the case of a permanent ban the user should at
| least be able to download all their account data; this
| feature is already implemented for compliance with GDPR
| anyway and the online platform wouldn't lose anything by
| at least not making pictures etc. inaccessible forever.
| my123 wrote:
| You suppose that a bad actor at one point will always
| stay a bad actor in the future.
| feanaro wrote:
| And how do you propose to unilaterally and absolutely
| define what a "bad actor" is?
| 015a wrote:
| If meeting these requirements is too difficult for your
| organization, then that's a sign your organization isn't
| mature enough to take on the responsibility of running this
| service in the first place.
|
| An oil refinery is able to make it another year because they
| dump all of their waste into the river behind the factory.
| Proper disposal is expensive and difficult. Is this fine?
|
| There's a very valid argument that rules like this would just
| entrench existing players and hurt startup competition. I'm
| fine with this.
|
| Running globally distributed, massively critical services
| like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc do, is a similarly
| massive responsibility. Parler incited an insurrection.
| Telegram is used to incite violence. Jeeze, plenty of this
| happens on Facebook & Twitter too. We're far, far past the
| golden days of scrappy startups _deserving_ to be able to
| connect the whole planet without consequences.
|
| The only reason why the oil refinery metaphor sounds so
| obvious is because we understand the consequences of dumping
| toxic waste. We understand them, today. We did not understand
| them 100 years ago. We lived through the consequences, and
| built laws to dampen them. The internet is, what, thirty
| years old? Its a baby. We don't understand its impact on
| society; we want to believe its positive, but we can't say
| for sure, and there's a ton of evidence pointing to it being
| just as negative as positive.
|
| GDPR is a step in this direction; it does enable existing
| players to reinforce their moat against scrappy startups. Its
| especially harsh when one considers that it happened in
| Europe, which has almost no homegrown mega-tech sector like
| the US and China do. But, its still necessary. You're saying
| we should enable tech companies to act with essential
| impunity because it would be difficult for them to run their
| services in a way which is ethical and just. I refuse to
| sacrifice ethics on the altar of capitalism; I don't care how
| hard it is, and I don't care how much it costs them.
|
| As for the legality: Many things are legal, or illegal, until
| they aren't. The funny thing about laws are, we make them.
| They're not etched into a big stone on a mountain, forever
| static.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Would it be acceptable if the government set up a regulatory
| body that could force Facebook et al to communicate why a
| user was banned? Here's how I imagine it would work:
|
| 1. User gets banned by Facebook without an explanation
|
| 2. User asks Facebook for an explanation
|
| 3. Facebook declines to answer
|
| 4. User goes to the government regulatory body with a
| complaint
|
| 5. Regulatory body forces Facebook to provide a reason
|
| 6. Facebook tells user what they violated and when
|
| Step #5 would allow the regulatory body to require
| identification to make sure that the user is under their
| jurisdiction (or you just have to show up in person). This
| would allow them to identify bad actors and would decrease
| the chance that the system could be abused.
|
| Obviously this should only apply to platforms/services that
| are beyond a certain size (>1M users?). Also, I wouldn't be
| surprised if some consumer protection agency doesn't already
| have powers akin to this.
| roenxi wrote:
| Acceptable, sure. As burdens go it isn't crazy.
|
| Useful/good idea is one for the debate floor. I imagine in
| this case, for example, Facebook would send Mr. Birch an
| email telling him that he distributed nude photos via
| Messenger and they have a 0 tolerance policy towards that.
| That doesn't really move the situation forward from what is
| already being publicly written about in an article. It
| increases the cost of competing with Facebook too, which is
| probably an own goal given the outcomes the regulation is
| trying to achieve.
|
| There are a lot of things in life that _do not need_ a
| legislative response. Being banned from Facebook is one of
| them.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| I can easily see that being abused to only force an
| explanation if the one banned is a politician, and the
| bannee(?) is the same political party as those in charge.
| Not to mention that the FTC is already a thing.
| joshspankit wrote:
| I wonder if something similar could be accomplished with a
| group helping people file specific Freedom Of Information
| requests. I feel like the reason would have to legally be
| in there
| cutitout wrote:
| > If I have to communicate to every bad actor how I
| identified them as a bad actor, that only helps them sidestep
| my prevention mechanisms.
|
| If you don't, you're the bad actor. If specific actions lead
| to a ban, the way to sidestep that is to not do those
| actions. If you don't even look at the actions but some BS
| meta stuff, or have wishy-washy rules you enforce randomly,
| you're the bad actor.
| 0df8dkdf wrote:
| _Have you never been involved in an effort to counter spam,
| either via email or comments?_
|
| It is often the reason for corporation like fb and google for
| closing account. It is totally BS. Spam is NOT a big deal
| compare to censorship. Any competent developer can use
| Bayesian algorithm to counter spam on a personal level, and
| the code can be just sitting on the client side. The big
| problem is these data company won't be able to get your data.
|
| Not getting tech support lowers the profit margin for the big
| corp. However, automation and AI are NOT a replace for good
| customer support. Get some freaking real humane tech support
| in relation to the number of active user you have Google/FB.
| This is one of reason why the world hates you.
| [deleted]
| cosmodisk wrote:
| >What kind of %#*& customer service is this that it takes over
| five months to even try to get ahold of a real human being to
| help with a problem!!!! This is horrible.
|
| If you aren't buying ads on FB, you aren't a customer,no matter
| how you look at it.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| |Nevertheless users who are stupid enough to actually rely on
| Facebook without having backup communication channels and
| backup picture storage just have to be educated about this is
| stupid. Whenever somebody says they want to communicate via the
| Messenger I don't even consider this because this is just
| insane, even to install this app is crazy. Sadly, too many
| people say this nowadays.|
|
| This isn't necessarily the issue now that Facebook has linked
| their hardware platform (Occulus) to your Facebook account.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Every action of this kind should be accompanied with clear and
| very specific (including time and date) specification of the
| reason._
|
| GDPR gives you the right to have any algorithmic decision
| explained, people just need to start using it and complaining
| to the commissioners.
| dleslie wrote:
| Outlawed?!
|
| Facebook is not an essential service; it is not a monopoly; and
| access to it is not a human right.
|
| By freedom of association, Facebook ought to be able to drop
| users arbitrarily as they see fit.
| vixen99 wrote:
| You are correct but there's an interesting question here with
| ramifications worth thinking through. Would we stick to this
| view if 90% of the world's population used it instead of the
| current 34%? Is there any % at which we might question your
| three statements? And if selected, why that figure? Seems odd
| that one person, a single smart lucky entrepreneur, would
| continue to be the moral arbiter for postings by its users
| irrespective of any view taken by democratically-elected
| governments anywhere. Of course one trusts that soon,
| alternatives will arise and allow those who want to, to jump
| ship.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Alternatives have been around for _decades_ :
| https://friendi.ca/
|
| People can't jump ship because of network effects:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect That's why you
| see mass exoduses, like what happened with WhatsApp;
| there's no interoperability between Facebook and the rest
| of the social media space, so you lose contact with nearly
| every Facebook user when you leave Facebook. You can put up
| with a lot when it's the only way to talk to your family.
| ssivark wrote:
| By the same standard of freedom of association, users should
| have a say over whether Facebook collects any data about them
| I.e. no shadow profiles, and ability to sever one's
| relationship with Facebook and purge all data.
| drewmol wrote:
| mbasic.facebook.com <- (you can use messages feature w/o app)
| simplecto wrote:
| That is a bit uncharitable to call users stupid in this
| context. From the story it seems that there is not even a
| warning before the rug is completely pull out and burned.
| deepsun wrote:
| What do you mean outlawed? Facebook.com is private commercial
| property, they can define rules and decide which customers they
| work with. The only thing they cannot do is restrict users by
| categories, protected by law.
|
| The solution is to decentralize and connect our own facebooks.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Facebook.com is not a simple private commercial property
| anymore. It obviously has other attributes which make it
| different from any other. It's too influential and too
| important for too many people.
| root_axis wrote:
| Fortnite is also important to a lot of people, that doesn't
| make it _actually_ important.
| username90 wrote:
| Facebook acts as an identity provider similar to gmail.
| That is pretty different from Fortnite, losing your
| account could mean you lose access to tons of important
| sites.
| root_axis wrote:
| I'd argue as a general rule that there are no important
| websites that require Facebook to access your account.
| Also, you can typically use an e-mail to recover access
| to an account that you used social media to authenticate
| with.
| wernercd wrote:
| when Facebook can highlight lies about a candidate and
| allow them to perpetuate without issue... and then
| suppress lies about another candidate with extreme
| prejudice...
|
| Saying that a company that can literally affect global
| elections based on whims of political people at the
| top... isn't important?
|
| the scope of Facebook in no way shape or form compares to
| Fortnite... unless fortnight is enforcing rules for one
| group but not another and fortnite affects elections and
| the global conversation.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| So in other words, a company that does too well and is too
| successful at making a product popular should lose the same
| basic property rights and freedom of association every
| other person and organization is given under the
| constitution, as punishment for their success
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| To be fair, anti-trust laws are based on that principle.
| There's nothing inherently wrong (or illegal) with having
| a billion users, but a company that takes advantage of
| that power is a bad thing.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > What do you mean outlawed? Facebook.com is private
| commercial property, they can define rules and decide which
| customers they work with. The only thing they cannot do is
| restrict users by categories, protected by law.
|
| It's pretty clear the GP wants to change the laws to make
| such actions by Facebook illegal. Facebook is private of
| course, they still have to follow the law. Are you saying you
| don't know specifically what the change in the laws would be
| (of course we can't expect the GP to have all the details
| worked out) or do you not understand the concept that we as a
| society can change the law to regulate Facebook's actions?
| lukifer wrote:
| 1. Due to network effects, there's an argument that some
| types of online services are natural monopolies [0], and
| should be regulated the way we do for electricity, water,
| etc. There are reasonable arguments against such regulation
| (in any domain); but it's potentially within the purview of
| the state to set "rules of the road" for the market, which in
| this context could mean digital due process, algorithmic
| transparency, interoperability, etc.
|
| 2. While I don't disregard Barry Goldwater's argument against
| the Civil Rights Act [1], the fact is that right now we _do_
| actively interfere in the marketplace to mandate transactions
| not be constrained by "protected categories":
| race/gender/creed/etc. I don't think it's at all unreasonable
| to proactively extend this protection to include political
| alignments or even epistemic opinions.
|
| (One of the things I find most curious about CRA, is that
| while most of its categories are "immutable characteristics",
| one's faith is more a matter of choice than genetics. If I
| claimed my religion was "I worship $POLITICAL_PARTY", would
| it then be protected? What is the scope of what defines a
| "faith"? In a neighboring FB banning instance [2], Lincoln
| Cannon even describes how his inciting post advocating
| decentralization derives from his Mormon beliefs.)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1964/06/19/archives/text-of-
| goldwate...
|
| [2] https://lincoln.metacannon.net/2021/01/facebook-disabled-
| my-...
| kevingadd wrote:
| How would you actually ensure that they aren't (for example)
| banning customers of a protected race or other class if they
| refuse to provide any information on why a user was banned?
| All you can do is act on faith if their policies are secret
| and their decisions are also secret.
|
| This is less far-fetched than you might imagine. TikTok
| moderators were ordered to prevent disabled users from
| appearing in feeds [1], which in practice is blatant
| discrimination against a protected class - but you'd never
| know about it directly since even if you figured out you were
| hidden from feeds, why would they answer unless they were
| forced to?
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/2/20991843/tiktok-
| bytedance...
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Strawman here: Let's say there was a large corporation that
| owned an airline. Can they not you on the airline because you
| are a spanish matador? Airlines leak into our tax system: we
| protect the air space, fund traffic control, etc. This is
| where I get pissed off. If you are this large you are no
| longer a "private commercial property".
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Every action of this kind should be accompanied with clear
| and very specific (including time and date) specification of
| the reason.
|
| I can see Facebooks side of this - when you give a specific
| reason, you open yourself up to a lot of counter-arguments,
| possibly outraging news articles for a bad formulation or a not
| fully specific reasoning and you give intel to spammers on how
| you detected them. Additionally, having service reps find and
| cite the exact violated terms costs a lot of time _and it would
| not even matter_ - FB is free to ban you if it wants, the
| specific reasoning would be more of a FYI.
|
| And, of course, in cases like this, where the ban was
| presumably unjustified or unnecessary, this is rather cruel. I
| fully agree. But on the other hand, FB bans probably hit bots
| 99% of the time and, even if not, are usually justified [0].
| Opening up such a large attack surface and spending large
| amounts of money for the few cases where it hits a innocent (?)
| person is just not viable, and, as bad as it is, I can
| understand Facebook here.
|
| The moral of the story is, as mentioned in the article, that
| the actual error was to rely on Facebook.
|
| [0] I have obviously no hard data on this, but if this would
| happen a lot, it would be quite bad press. So I'm very sure
| that FB would tackle this problem if users would actually
| become scared of a false ban.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > FB bans probably hit bots 99% of the time
|
| Greatly doubt that given overt spam being so prevalent.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Confirmation bias.
|
| If, hypothetically, 99% of bots were banned and there's
| enough lingering, you would doubt it to be true.
|
| Although, I tend to agree with you about spam prevalence.
| I've reported dozens of spam/scams/fake accounts and almost
| every time, I'm told that the post/account "doesn't violate
| [their] community standards."
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > I can see Facebooks side of this - when you give a specific
| reason, you open yourself up to a lot of counter-arguments,
| possibly outraging news articles for a bad formulation or a
| not fully specific reasoning and you give intel to spammers
| on how you detected them.
|
| If the counter-arguments are reasonable, then Facebook
| _should_ be attacked.
|
| > Additionally, having service reps find and cite the exact
| violated terms costs a lot of time and it would not even
| matter - FB is free to ban you if it wants, the specific
| reasoning would be more of a FYI.
|
| I think the implicit implication is that Facebook should
| _not_ legally be allowed to ban you only if it wants. I would
| personally get behind such legislation. Sure if Facebook were
| just a social platform that's one thing, but it is tied to
| other services (e.g. Oculus) and is an identity provider for
| many other services. I don't believe Facebook should be able
| to have it both ways.
| stevespang wrote:
| Who really cares ?
|
| You can openly buy as little as 10 phone pre-verified Facebook
| logins on the web for less than $20 to use as your own.
|
| I never have "officially" joined Facebook and never will - - I
| get too much pleasure and smug satisfaction trolling Zuckerberg
| as it is.
|
| Somebody will create a decentralized "peer to peer" version of
| Facebook soon enough . . . that's what keeps Zuckerberg up awake
| at night
| mikeymz wrote:
| If everyone stopped using Facebook then the problems with
| Facebook would stop
| calmlynarczyk wrote:
| I'm in a similar situation right now where I am unable to create
| an Instagram account. I deleted my Facebook and Instagram
| accounts nearly a decade ago. Recently, I've been searching for
| artists to commission for work, but everyone uses Insta for their
| portfolios now instead of an openly accessible website. Browsing
| Insta without an account is a PITA because you constantly get
| blocked from content until you log in. So I caved and tried
| creating an account.
|
| Go to the registration screen, enter all of my info, and submit.
| Get a weird error message along the lines of "your information is
| incorrect; please enter your phone number to verify your info."
| Enter my phone number; "your information is incorrect." Get
| booted back to the login screen. Try to log in using the
| credentials I just entered and get an invalid email address
| message. Try to create an account again with that email; "that
| email address can not be used to create an account."
|
| So I tried two more times, first registering with all the correct
| personal info and a different email address. Same result. Try
| again with yet another email address that I have never used to
| sign up for an account, this time entering random personal
| information, using a different web browser, and connecting to the
| hotspot on my phone instead of my wifi. Still the same result.
| Ask my significant other to log in on my browser with her
| account; works just fine.
|
| Funny, why do they claim to know my personal information better
| than me? How would they even know all of that information? I
| don't know what criteria they are using to decide that I am not a
| valid person and therefore not allowed to sign up for their
| service. The only option I have left is to create a new email
| address and try registering an account using it and some fake
| identity.
| chovybizzass wrote:
| The quest2 was cool. Infact I was going to start developing apps
| for it, but I decided to return it because you HAVE to connect to
| facebook and people are getting banned left and right for "bad
| behavior" which could be as little as dropping an "f-bomb"
| sli wrote:
| Ban reasons also include making a Facebook account just for the
| Quest and not using it for anything else.
| klyrs wrote:
| This has _got_ to be illegal. It sounds like a bait & switch
| to me. I truly hope that there's a class action lawsuit
| underway...
|
| Turns out folks are trying to rally one, and that it's
| specifically illegal in Germany https://www.reddit.com/r/ocul
| us/comments/jht6kx/class_action...
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Ya, thanks to FB, VR in the mainstream is effectively dead.
| sircastor wrote:
| I think is effectively delayed. Sooner or later someone else
| will develop competing products. Both Microsoft and Sony have
| a stake in this game.
| root_axis wrote:
| There's also a nascent jailbreak community that will
| eventually crack it.
| chovybizzass wrote:
| They already did, but I'm not into voiding my warranties.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| The Vive exists. Windows Mixed Reality from a dozen vendors
| exists. This misstep only affects Oculus.
| ve55 wrote:
| "Your account has been permanently disabled for not following the
| Facebook Community Standards."
|
| One problem that is less-discussed is that Facebook is absolutely
| not a community. It's a collection of millions of communities,
| and even then just one medium for them, which all have different
| norms, standards, goals, beliefs, and types of people.
|
| Facebook's position is inherently unwinnable because they will be
| hated regardless of how they attempt to moderate their platform.
| It is all too easy for us to say 'just do better moderation'
| without realizing how intractable that problem is, due to 1)
| differing communities/people, and 2) scales in the _billions_ of
| users (for example, imagine one employee is tasked with
| monitoring content from 10,000 people. If you needed to moderate
| 2 billion people, you would need 2B /10K = 200,000 full-time
| employees just for moderation. Hiring enough employees is also
| not enough, as they need to be consistent with each other as
| well).
|
| This isn't intended to be a defense of Facebook, but rather just
| another point demonstrating that centralized platforms for all of
| humanity are not the right solution for how we should
| communicate.
| irq wrote:
| If it can't be done without harming society then it should be
| destroyed. This is why we don't have nuclear powered cruise
| missiles, by the way.
| senthilnayagam wrote:
| I was banned permanently from facebook in 2017.
|
| my crime I downloaded a twitter embedded video and uploaded it to
| my facebook account , it was for copyright violation.
|
| losing account was bad but worse was losing 10+ years of posts
| and thousands of photos which I had uploaded of my kids. I never
| took backups .
|
| I appealed multiple times also tries asking help from facebook
| employees, nothing materialised. I never got my backup .
|
| I now have multiple hard disks for my backups
| tamaharbor wrote:
| You can get banned from Facebook if you call Maxine Waters a
| stupid old hag. Go figure.
| shepik wrote:
| I tried to read this article, but instead got greeted by "I am
| human" checkbox, then (after successfully completing captcha)
| "Error 1020 Access denied". Article opens just fine if i use EU
| or US proxy. But when i try to access it directly, or through my
| work VPN, or through russian proxy, it's Access Denied.
|
| It seems that authors of the article how "facebook can ban you
| for whatever reason" banned whole country.
| Tepix wrote:
| Today i listened to a show on German radio
| https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr5/sendungen/europamagazin/index...
| that was discussing some planned regulation regarding the rights
| of social networks. It included the right to appeal bans and to
| even sue the networks. It seems like something along these lines
| is a necessary evil.
| Udik wrote:
| I posted this today in another discussion, sorry for the spamming
| but I think it's relevant to this one as well:
|
| We need laws that: 1) Will force social media companies to
| provide, publicly, reasons for their blockings and takedowns,
| potentially exposing themselves to libel charges.
|
| 2) Allow individuals and organisations whose accounts have been
| blocked to download all their contents within a period of time
| after the blocking or removal happened.
|
| 3) Enforce standards so that the downloaded contents can be
| easily uploaded in bulk to alternative platforms.
| type0 wrote:
| > "Facebook is not a photo storage service."
|
| That doesn't matter, what matters is how users perceive it,
| almost everyone I know keep telling me that it is (if it walk
| like a duck...)
| iamleppert wrote:
| I call bullshit. I've regularly sent nude photos and full on
| videos using Facebook messenger. I'm also a member of many group
| chats and private Facebook groups where this kind of content is
| shared.
| 13415 wrote:
| Facebook's content and ad moderation is known to be aleatory,
| as is anything related to appeals or contacting
| representatives. My personal suspicion is that the company is
| both technically incompetent and has confused internal handling
| and supervision.
|
| It's no problem as long as you don't rely with your business on
| them, i.e., as long as you don't rely on Facebook ads,
| messenger, your Facebook page, or any other paid or free
| service they offer for your business.
| croes wrote:
| "You aren't a customer of Facebook" Is this still valid for
| Oculus users, that bought apps from the app store? They paid, so
| they are customers, right?
| hntrader wrote:
| I lost my Google account because I changed my phone number, and
| when I logged onto it using another device it asked me to verify
| myself by inputting the code from an SMS message, which I
| couldn't do. I went through their automated account recovery
| process and tried to get in touch with a human to the best of my
| ability, but no luck after hours of effort.
|
| It really sucks, I wish there was I way I could've paid $50 to
| them so that a real human could review my case, I'd be happy to
| make the payment given that it's a free service and I realize
| that mistakes like this can happen. But I guess they'd be
| criticized if they were to implement something like this, not to
| mention the incentive to start blocking many more accounts.
|
| As it stands, the $ value of each customer is less than the cost
| associated with manually reviewing cases, so a financial decision
| is being made. But I wonder if it's a bit short-sighted given the
| PR and goodwill that could come from doing it properly. Given
| their monopoly status it probably doesn't factor much into their
| decision making, though.
| lovecg wrote:
| > not to mention the incentive to start blocking many more
| accounts
|
| I've seen this simplistic "incentive" thinking in many many
| arguments of this kind recently. I don't see why this would at
| all be the case here. Do you think the team responsible for
| this service will be graded on the total amount of fines
| collected as one of their OKRs? What does the chain of decision
| making from top to bottom look like for that to be the case?
| Not everything is as straightforward as revenue = more of that
| thing.
| hntrader wrote:
| You're right that there's not a good reason to expect
| incentive to block people, a priori, even though it's vaguely
| plausible.
|
| I do expect that they would certainly be accused that that's
| their motive whenever someone gets blocked unfairly, which
| could lead to some bad PR, notwithstanding whether that's
| what's actually going on.
| barbacoa wrote:
| One the plus side facebook finally gave people the ability to
| permanently delete your account.
| crmd wrote:
| There are clear antitrust issues here. The consequence of his
| misbehavior using Messenger includes no longer being allowed to
| use a competitor of Messenger (WhatsApp), along with Facebook,
| Instagram, Oculus, etc. These services are leaders in their
| respective markets and are unrelated to each other except they
| are all controlled by the same guy. This is why too much power in
| two few hands is bad for capitalism and humanity, and one of the
| major reasons antitrust law exists.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > too much power in two few hands is bad for capitalism
|
| too much power in too few hands is an inherent feature of
| capitalism.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Weird, I'm pretty sure I've sent and received nudes recently via
| FB messenger and nothing happened.
| hnarn wrote:
| I personally don't understand why anyone feels they have a
| "right" to use Facebook, or even the right to expect a statement
| as to why Facebook does not allow them to register. They're a
| corporation offering a service in exchange for data-mining
| everything you do, why wouldn't they be free to choose who gets
| to use the service, and why would they have to justify it?
|
| If you, the reader, launched a website and allowed anyone to
| register and use the service for free, do you feel that you then
| would be obligated to offer the service to anyone, or that if you
| denied them service, that you should be required to explain
| exactly why?
|
| Presumably the answer is no, but I'm guessing most people feel
| that there's a difference between Facebook and just one guy
| launching a website. I would question where that line is drawn
| though, at which point, at how many active users did Facebook
| become public domain?
| hyko wrote:
| If you're still using Facebook at this point:
|
| You were warned.
| [deleted]
| officialchicken wrote:
| Unfortunately, there are no simple or direct instructions to
| follow in the article - just hints.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| It sounds like the meat of the article is:
|
| > "After a concert, I logged onto Facebook and was talking to a
| friend," Birch recalled. "I was on my laptop and I accidentally
| sent a partial nude photo. A few minutes later, I received an
| alert that Facebook blocked me."
|
| I'm not adventurous enough to try this, but that sounds like
| the reason. It could also not be and the banned person is
| leaving out information.
|
| The rest of the article is detailing the massively one-side
| "appeals" process and how it did nothing to help.
| fencepost wrote:
| The guy's actions after getting professionals involved may
| have guaranteed that even if they're was a chance he
| completely eliminated it. He'd better avoid any actual legal
| trouble because he's clearly shown that he's incapable of
| SHUTTING THE F UP and letting paid counsel work.
|
| On a related note re: Lincoln Cannon's Twitter thread, there
| was at least one response saying '[yeah they banned me for no
| reason as well]' where just looking at the profile pic with a
| QAnon quote was enough to give some indication of why...
| berkes wrote:
| The 'reasons' given in the article are vague and onesided.
| tekproxy wrote:
| "Customer service" lol
|
| You're not the customer.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| This sort of aggressive banning over sexual content seems to have
| really taken off since the passage of FOSTA/SESTA a couple years
| ago. Social media sites were never libertine, but they were at
| least more relaxed about sexual content before anything that
| might turn out to be linked to sex trafficking was carved out of
| the section 230 safe harbor.
|
| They're dealing with a wildly asymmetric risk profile. It would
| be almost impossible for them to reliably distinguish legitimate
| sexual content from illegal content related to trafficking in a
| way that scales to the size of their platforms. But even one
| slip-up in doing so could expose them to serious criminal
| liability. So, while I agree that these policies are wildly non-
| linear, I don't see them having any realistic choice in the
| matter. A puritanical value system has effectively been forced
| upon them by federal legislation.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-23 23:01 UTC)