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What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account (2012)

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Re: What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account (2012)

#31
I think the worst thing that they do is disable your ability to send messages. This weekend a friend committed suicide, and I had just started a seven day ban due to idiotically posting the wrong photo (a nude) to a meme group.

Whereas most of my closest friends have me on WhatsApp, so I could reassure them I was ok, it was really fucking horrible getting a bunch of Messenger messages asking if I was ok and being completely unable to respond to them.

Poor timing I know, but if they expect people to use and depend upon Messenger, it's actually really irresponsible to take away the ability for people to communicate with each other, plus I see no benefit in doing that.

Most of my friends I eventually managed to get in contact with in other ways, but others I couldn't. Sure it's technically my fault for posting smut whilst drunk, but hindsight is 20/20 and we all make mistakes.

Furthermore, there appears to be absolutely no form of appeals process or a way to say, get the ban suspended due to it being some messed up times.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Re: What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account (2012)

#32
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can slightly mitigate this particular problem mentioned in the article (the author used it to manage FB pages): I always use at least 2 personal accounts for managing a FB page. One is actively used whereas the other one is just a backup in case something happens to the first one. Redundancy is always important, also in social media.

How did you create 2 fb accounts? Don't they ask for phone number confirmation?

I don't think so. I have 3 accounts (I never use any of them, or FB at all, these days, but they are all still active). None of them are in my real name, but all have plausible-sounding names.

Re: What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account (2012)

#33
post #23
post #9

I know the article is old, but the author showed a severe lack of common sense. Facebook is NOT a backup. If you only keep stuff in your Facebook account, then it is as 'at risk' as if you only kept on the hard-drive of your ageing laptop that you bought on discount in Walmart/ASDA ten years ago. This oft quoted adage also applies: 'If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product'. The author seemed t…

Fair enough, still though, you'd think someone at facebook would have returned his photos and videos if he had requested, just to be nice. We are moving to a cloud based world, and I'd hate for it to be a world where people rely widely on cloud based services and risk losing their vital documents if they get banned from a given service.

We're there, and have been for years. The employees aren't paid to be "nice", and if you don't have a contract with the company storing your data, then you're making a mistake relying on them.

Rely on them for convenient access to your files...but not as your prime copy, or your essential backup. You use their services at their whim.

Re: What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account (2012)

#34
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll just title themselves as a "private club", like other organizations that wanted to continue discriminating after public accommodations were enacted. And in all fairness, FB originally started that way when you needed a university email address to join.

As long as we are updating the definition of public accommodation, we can also define the "private". My point was more that it is not unreasonable to look to regulations to deal with Facebook. The regulations do not necessarily have to be "public accommodations", I just cited them as the most relevant legal concept I was aware of.

I am more than happy to give Facebook as much rope as it needs.

No worries though, other sovereign entities are trying to do what you suggest, so we get the best of both worlds. It's a wonderful demonstration of why nation-states should defend their independence.

Re: What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account (2012)

#35
post #6

From 2012. This part is quite dated: "Facebook can disable your account if your display name is different than that on your birth certificate".

Right. Now they make you upload a photo with your full face showing. No need for certificate.

Just create a new account, now.

Re: What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account (2012)

#36
post #9

I know the article is old, but the author showed a severe lack of common sense. Facebook is NOT a backup. If you only keep stuff in your Facebook account, then it is as 'at risk' as if you only kept on the hard-drive of your ageing laptop that you bought on discount in Walmart/ASDA ten years ago. This oft quoted adage also applies: 'If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product'. The author seemed t…

'If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product'

This adage is beginning to show its age - virtually all services that can get their hands on your data end up selling it nowadays, whether you pay them or not. I heard even some restaurant chains sell data on who they served and when.

Re: What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account (2012)

#38
> So what did I learn from my experience with Facebook? Back up your account! You never know if/when they’ll decide to delete you.

Just delete your account. Find a way to share your photos without any of this nonsense: Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Flickr. Not only do you run the risk of Facebook deleting your stuff, but [when I still had an account] it was was a dreadful UX for exploring photos. Use products built for photos if you want to get the most out of your photos.

Re: What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account (2012)

#39
(cough cough) www.famipix.com More info: https://www.famipix.com/privacy-promise

And: free for schools, with intuitive (and well-documented) features to let schools quickly share photos with parents.

And of course download a zip of your albums whenever you want.

-

I started this site in 2005 to share photos of my growing family, as I was living abroad. I've never shared any meaningful photos on Facebook.

Re: What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account (2012)

#40

Big companies don't owe you anything by hosting the files for you, because you are the product. Something similar happened to me in 2012 but with a Gmail account[1]. So, I built an app to backup my emails. The whole ordeal, in hindsight, was the best thing that could happen to me, it taught me a good lesson on data sovereignty in the internet world and opened up a small passive income stream. [1] https://thehorcrux.c…

Yeah, I too was a victim of a random Gmail ban without warning or recourse, so I stopped using webmail ask together and keep all my mail local.

Agreed.

I always tell people I know to atleast use an email address with their own domain, if they can't set up their own server.

https://thehorcrux.com/about/#advise

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