Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What I Learned When Facebook Disabled My Account (2012)

optimizationtoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 133 posts

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

#71

Post by kaybe »

Asooka wrote: post #45
krylon wrote: post #8

On the one hand, I cannot help but feel for this person - Facebook, without an explanation, did significant damage to this person's career. At least that's the way he paints it (though he mentions a rule in his mailbox that deleted mail from facebook automatically, so there might have been a warning and all that - we'll never know). On the other hand, well, that is precisely what some people warned us of - give a sin…

The actual solution would be something like "pool all our money, then execute a hostile takeover of Facebook, kick the entire board, and pivot the company to a nonprofit business model". Until then, well... https://xkcd.com/743/

I don't fully understand the point this comic is trying to make. Can someone give me their perspective please?

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

#72

Post by pqwEfkvjs »

Pretty weird, I have been operating a number of fake accounts for spamming, trolling and information retrieval purposes for years and never got a single account blocked.

I've only got challenges to identify people in pictures if too many people deny your friend request in some time window. But this is easy to solve as you can see the faces by searching their name in second window.

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

#73

Post by NuDinNou »

zamalek wrote: post #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 buil…

I get the idea that you need a more serious back up for your personal stuff. But what's wrong with using FB to share photos with friends? FB takes down your account? No problem, you upload your photos from an external HDD to other sites.

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

#74

Post by wordupmaking »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #60
Jaruzel wrote: 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…

As usual, there's an eerily appropriate xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1150/ .

"Did Chad ask you with a big fat grin on his face to put everything that matters to you in this awesome garage which he built solely for the purpose of 'helping' people show off and connect without having to know how to build shelves? No? Does he arbitrarily kick some out, and let others stay? Yes? Then this cartoon doesn't apply at all."

It's not about business or legality, it's about being a dick or not, or, as demonstrated here, about being a coward or not when someone's being a dick to your friend. Of course, seeing how hard Facebook and other middlemen try to insert themselves into fucking everything, it's about a bit more than just being a dick, but it's pointless to discuss the ocean before we're clear about what is the water drop and what is the sophistry.

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

#75

Post by facetube »

Mikushi wrote: post #42
antihero wrote: post #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 com…

> there appears to be absolutely no form of appeals process It's a common problem with these giants (Facebook, Google, Twitter). Being an area that does not generate profit there is not attention paid to it, or just the bare minimum. Though I understand the difficulties to scale something like that to hundred of millions of users. Even if a small fraction want to appeal whatever ban they received that could be quite…

They flat-out have evidence of offers of bribery in exchange for fake news site takedowns – right now, along with the Senate intelligence committee – and have failed to act. They're knowingly turning a bling eye to criminal activity because it is in their profit interest.

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

#76

Post by qrbLPHiKpiux »

suhastech wrote: post #40
JetSpiegel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In one line, you said Google disabled your account.

In another line, you say have your own domain and let FastMail or google apps manage your mail.

I don't understand ./?

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

#77

Post by reitanqild »

fattire wrote: post #21
Jaruzel wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only solution I can think of is for lots and lots of people to pool their money and start a non-profit Facebook. See https://diasporafoundation.org/ Not that they've actually made any sort of dent in the problem - as you say, the network effect is just too strong.

Sometimes the only way to win is not to play at all. If you want to contact me on Facebook about that... well, I never had an account, and I am surviving... somehow. BTW https://mastodon.social is making some headway. I see a lot of security people have switched to it.

Isn't that a twitter clone?

(My point is that IMO twitter was the most useless of all the mainstream social networks until snapchat arrived.

I reached this conclusion by seing that you can get to twitter functionality from both facebook, instagram and google+ just by removing features and introducing limitations.)

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

#78

Post by eveningcoffee »

DarkKomunalec wrote: post #36
Jaruzel wrote: 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.

We need laws that will put real chill in the people who try to get away with something like this.

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

#79

Post by dredmorbius »

smeroth wrote: post #30
MikeVanBike wrote: post #24

I learn to quit facebook very early days. I don't like the privacy violations or that big brother spying you feeling. Also account deletions are happening to everyone who talk against facebook. Crooked as google. Both really disappointing services all the way. People, please use alternatives

Alternatives to Facebook that's not made by Google?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social

https://gnu.io/social/

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

#80

Post by ghaff »

ggm wrote: post #17

The meta-lesson from this, is that hosted domains, services have to meet the AUP of the host, and your SLA with the host has to cover off on dispute or you are in a high risk situation. I have a personal domain hosted at google. I stand at risk of having them close the google account but retention of the domain is outside of that situation, I would need to be rejected by both google, and the dns registrar to lose all…

The reality is that you are always subject to T&Cs and decisions of a wide range of third-party service providers. Even in the most independent case, you're probably still dependent on domain registrars and one or more ISPs--as well as being affected by the actions of organizations like Spamhaus.

What you can (and often should) do for critical services is to use providers that don't create huge dependencies on a particular provider. It's probably a lot easier to switch from sites hosted on Digital Ocean to AWS than it is from Facebook to X. Furthermore, if you're hosting sites on a site that actually exists for that purpose, I have a lot more confidence I'll be able to work through issues than one hosting sites more or less incidentally (as in the case of Facebook).

Post reply on HN