> 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)<p>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.<p>> 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.<p>As well as this - not a single banning/unbanning/whatever decision should be automated. An automatic system can only pint to what is suspicious.<p>> And the unique nature of Facebook makes this type of case impossible to mediate.<p>It is not unique. And everything has been unique at first anyway. We just need to define and regulate this kind of service.<p>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.
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.<p>Stripping you from your right to exercise control over your personal data is illegal in the EU.
"Your account has been permanently disabled for not following the Facebook Community Standards."<p>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.<p>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 <i>billions</i> 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).<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
From the article:<p>> 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.<p>> 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.<p>> 3) Facebook doesn’t owe you an account. There are no current laws that require Facebook to allow anyone to participate.<p>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.<p>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.
"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?
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"
"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.
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.
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.
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.<p>It seems that authors of the article how "facebook can ban you for whatever reason" banned whole country.
In a very similar situation, I posted a pair of "Waxed Flesh" boots on eBay from my 13 year (albeit rarely used) account. They had plenty of pictures, waxed flesh is a very well known term with regards to boot leathers, but within 2 minutes, my long term eBay account was permanently terminated with no chance for recourse.<p>Besides it being exceedingly difficult to find someone to talk to about this, when I finally did in the chat service they offer, as soon as I brought up my account they terminated the chat with some copy/paste message about how they cannot talk to me about it as it might compromise their fraud detection. People I've talked to have mentioned that it might be due to the fact that there was "Flesh" in the title, but that is a valid description of the good I was trying to sell.<p>I guess what I'm trying to say, is that it felt entirely arbitrary, I had no recourse with regards to the discussion, and eBay is similarly shitty with regards to service.
Today i listened to a show on German radio <a href="https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr5/sendungen/europamagazin/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr5/sendungen/europamagazin/index...</a> 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.
By the way, what if somebody who wants to play a prank on you steals your phone and sends a porn picture or some hate speech to somebody in the Facebook messenger? Will this block you from Facebook for life? Will cops arrive and jail you for sexual harassment or whatever? This seems like something quite possible to happen e.g. at school.
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.<p>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."<p>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.<p>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.
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?<p>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?<p>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?
> "Facebook is not a photo storage service."<p>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...)
If not customers, then what else could they be? Data entry workers?<p>That just makes Facebook’s behaviour all the more egregious. Perhaps there needs to be a social data a try worker’s union.
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.
i banned from facebook, because i m posting against islamic terrorist in my country..
they thought i am supporting them.. stupid.. -_- no longer using facebook now..
I was banned permanently from facebook in 2017.<p>my crime I downloaded a twitter embedded video and uploaded it to my facebook account , it was for copyright violation.<p>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 .<p>I appealed multiple times also tries asking help from facebook employees, nothing materialised. I never got my backup .<p>I now have multiple hard disks for my backups
I posted this today in another discussion, sorry for the spamming but I think it's relevant to this one as well:<p>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.<p>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.<p>3) Enforce standards so that the downloaded contents can be easily uploaded in bulk to alternative platforms.