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Ask HN: Help with Meta

142 pointsby rqmedesover 2 years ago
This is a long shot, but I am a desperate dad reaching out to my developer network, and I thought I would also try here.<p>Unfortunately, my daughter inherited my autism, which made growing up difficult. She had no friends and was bullied so severely that after multiple schools, we were forced to home-school for most of her teenage years, then through the COVID lockdowns.<p>Social media became an essential part of her life, mainly Instagram. She worked hard on it for hours every day. She started modelling free collaborative work with photographers. She took the hard path; no bikinis, lingerie or sexualised content. She did this for years and eventually got enough followers to get regular paid modelling work, and at 19, this is now her job, along with singing which we started to help with her confidence.<p>We are unsure how it happened, but after four years, her account has been banned for impersonation. The only thing we can think of was a week ago, she ran into some of the girls who bullied her years ago, and they probably reported her out of spite.<p>There were no warnings, and the remediation process was a form that came back rejected with no ability to try again, even though she has a business registered for the account, driver&#x27;s license and other identification. We have tried everything else, and now she cannot even create a new account, as it is getting banned for spam if she tries contacting her old network. This is not only her job but her life, her network, and her friends; it&#x27;s all gone.<p>I know these are first-world problems, and it&#x27;s probably stupid to reach out to HN, but it broke my heart to witness the decade of pain she has gone through, every birthday party, not a single friend. Now watching her go through this, inconsolable, I am worried she will do something stupid to hurt herself,I am asking for any help.<p>I am looking for any contacts at Meta to see if there is any back channel to try and get her account reinstated or advice on how to move forward.

9 comments

rqmedesover 2 years ago
To the Hacker News Community, Thankyou!<p>The issues has been resolved!<p>I have lurked on this site since 2008 and have not really posted as I always struggle with the communication side of things and the rules of interaction. With software, technology and the world in general, it&#x27;s hard not to get cynical as you get older. However you are willing to go out of your way to help a stranger on the internet and you have restored my energy and faith. This has meant so much for my family.<p>LXE, thank you so much!
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MollyRealizedover 2 years ago
If I can respectfully add something to this post - I&#x27;m not sure how much this might help, but to those who were kind enough to offer to help, I would with great respect ask you to consider adding any internal influence you might have towards trying to make this sort of one-on-one, based-on-who-you-can-connect-with action unnecessary.<p>There is obviously something severely broken here. Aside from any ethical&#x2F;moral issue, I imagine Mr. Zuckerberg might be surprised about how becoming the one of the first Big Tech firms to &quot;fix&quot; their response might prove of great <i>pragmatic</i> benefit.<p>I&#x27;m fully aware the product is us, but for us to be a worthwhile product, we have to choose the site, something that is no longer as much of a reliable default for Meta.<p>Just my $0.02 as a Jo Schmoe in the Midwest.
fromover 2 years ago
Depending on how much is at stake here there is a site called swapd.co where a bunch of people advertise Instagram &quot;unbanning services.&quot; Basically they bribe Facebook support employees to get your account back. Typically they run for a few hundred dollars. I think the site has a built in escrow system too so as long as you pay on site you should be protected.<p>I hope this goes viral so you don&#x27;t have to do that but it&#x27;s an option. Good luck.
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lxeover 2 years ago
Shoot me an email. Contact in bio.
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wilsonnnnover 2 years ago
Happy to hear the issue is resolved. I&#x27;d be glad to bring my friends to wish her on her birthday. No one deserves to go through that. Wishing you and yours happy holidays!
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encryptluks2over 2 years ago
I know this isn&#x27;t what you&#x27;d want to hear, but if she doesn&#x27;t have an online site already it may be a good time to invest in putting the content on a website that you have more control over and trying to find channels to promote her without using Meta.
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hardwaresoftonover 2 years ago
Just a thought, but have you considered legal action?<p>If no one on HN is able to help, a letter written by a lawyer to Facebook legal might escalate the problem appropriately.
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rograndomover 2 years ago
I was hoping to write up a TellHN about something similar once my situation was resolved, but the same thing happened to me at the end of November.<p>My Facebook account has MFA and a very strong, unique password. I began to receive emails about my &quot;account recovery code&quot;, which I ignored. A day or so later I received an email that MFA was disabled, and then one that my password had been reset. I was able to immediately reset it again from a new device, log in, log out all other sessions and re-enable MFA. Then a few hours later the same thing happened, but by that time it was overnight and I wasn&#x27;t able to catch it in time. I woke up to the emails outlining that process again along with one saying my account had been suspended.<p>I went through the recommend process of supplying my ID, which was rejected as &quot;forged&quot; and I was told my account would be terminated, decision is final, no ability to appeal, etc. Luckily (maybe?) my account created Facebook Apps for some state and federal government offices and personnel, and those went away at the same time. Now there&#x27;s some high level people butting heads with the Meta Pro team on my behalf, and I&#x27;m watching the emails as they go back and forth.<p>It&#x27;s about 3 weeks later and I still haven&#x27;t gotten access back yet, but we&#x27;ve collected dozens of other cases of people that have had the same thing happen going back to mid-October.<p>It appears to be a scam where attackers are able to somehow gain access to Facebook accounts bypassing passwords and other authentication processes and then post about crypto and NFT sales on Facebook marketplace. If the account has a credit card attached, they will buy $100-500 worth of Facebook ads for the same thing.<p>We&#x27;re all wondering what happens to the regular people who don&#x27;t have the business connections to have the ability to reach out to someone that is able to bypass the regular process that is failing in a major way?
dnissleyover 2 years ago
Please reach out to me at ** -- lxe got to it first.
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