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Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

simonbackx.com

31–40 of 180 posts

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#31
Why not use full domains for a service like this?

Instead of client.your domain.tld, register client-your domain.tld. This would prevent one bad actor from nuking your whole business.

Yes it has a cost, but it’s like $10 a year for a new domain, which I bet pales in comparison to other direct costs of running a SaaS.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#32

First thing I always wonder with these, what did your customer(s) do wrong?

> ThreatExchange (aka TX or TE) is used by multiple companies to share signals on a variety of topics intended to prevent real world harm. Some examples of how TX is currently used include sharing malware, phishing scams, and terrorism signals with the goal of helping all participating organizations tackle these problems based on their terms of service.

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/threat-exchange/getting...

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#33

This is why massive companies like Meta and Alphabet needs to be nationalised. They simply have too much power over lives of billions. This article is just another reminder of this. At scale that Meta operates, this algorithmically decided domain blockings mean nothing to them, but everything to hundred's of non-profits. There need to be legally mandated protections so things like this never happen again.

> This is why massive companies like Meta and Alphabet needs to be nationalised. No. Giving this additional power to the government will not have the outcome you want. When something becomes too powerful, the solution is not to further concentrate that power into less accountable hands.

Nationalization is not necessary more concentration and less many accountable hands.

Well, it depends on the governance obviously. If you talk some autocratic regime, where the king proclaimed "I am the state", that fits your description for sure.

On the other hand, if you are looking at a direct democracy regime, you could hardly make the power more pervasive, and every citizen has to carry its part of accountability on every social matter.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#34

First thing I always wonder with these, what did your customer(s) do wrong?

Good question! I would also like to know the answer. I've scanned through our sites and couldn't find any malicious content... My guess is that the block was automated, and might have been caused by a fake spam report. There can be some competition between non-profits (e.g. two scouting groups in the same local area). Maybe they started to report each other as a joke.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#36

Why not use full domains for a service like this? Instead of client.your domain.tld, register client-your domain.tld. This would prevent one bad actor from nuking your whole business. Yes it has a cost, but it’s like $10 a year for a new domain, which I bet pales in comparison to other direct costs of running a SaaS.

Yes, that is a possibility. But we only charge $59 per year, so there is not much room for extra costs.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#37

This is why massive companies like Meta and Alphabet needs to be nationalised. They simply have too much power over lives of billions. This article is just another reminder of this. At scale that Meta operates, this algorithmically decided domain blockings mean nothing to them, but everything to hundred's of non-profits. There need to be legally mandated protections so things like this never happen again.

> This is why massive companies like Meta and Alphabet needs to be nationalised.

Nationalised by what country? US? UK? France? Russia? Saudi Arabia? India? China?

Would we have country-specific and isolated social media and search engines?

Even in nominally free western countries, do you really want the government controlling what can be in a search engine or posted on social media?

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#38
Fun story.

At my previous company we had "Sign in with Facebook" – whatever your opinions on it are, it was probably the right thing for the company at that time.

Facebook decided to "audit" us to make sure we were doing sign in right. The tested it incorrectly, told us we were at fault and needed to fix it, and gave us 2 weeks to do so. We scrambled to figure out what the issue was, only to find after they eventually replied to our emails (all they told us up-front was "it doesn't work") that they had tried to use a sign-in only button to sign-up, similar on many websites, not at all for our flow and not something it was possible for us to do. We explained this and they dropped the audit.

2 weeks later, they audited us again, failed us again, and gave us a deadline to fix it. We replied pointing to the previous case and explaining again why it was working. We never heard back.

2 weeks later, they audited us again, failed us again, and gave us a deadline to fix it. We replied asking what the hell was happening (politely). We never heard back.

1 week later "Sign in with Facebook" stopped working with no other warning. We opened a support case, we emailed our ads account manager, we emailed our previous ads account manager as the first was on holiday, and all we got was "we're looking into it, but it looks legit, fix it".

I asked for a call and explained that the current user experience for users was that they would click "Sign in with Facebook" and see an error saying "Facebook is currently not working, please sign in another way", and that the only way we had to resolve this was to email all our Facebook auth'd users a password reset with an explanation that Facebook sign in no longer worked, and to then remove the feature from our site.

"Ah. Ok yeah let me see what I can do". It was working about 2 hours later, and we weren't audited again in the rest of the time I was at the company.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#39

This is why massive companies like Meta and Alphabet needs to be nationalised. They simply have too much power over lives of billions. This article is just another reminder of this. At scale that Meta operates, this algorithmically decided domain blockings mean nothing to them, but everything to hundred's of non-profits. There need to be legally mandated protections so things like this never happen again.

> This is why massive companies like Meta and Alphabet needs to be nationalised. No. Giving this additional power to the government will not have the outcome you want. When something becomes too powerful, the solution is not to further concentrate that power into less accountable hands.

Maybe the service itself will be crap once run by governments. But at least things are covered by law. things like fair hearings and proper customer support. Now you can be banned from those ecosystems just like they do in dictorial states.

Re: Our domain and 700 non-profit sites got blocked by Meta

#40
post #19

This is why massive companies like Meta and Alphabet needs to be nationalised. They simply have too much power over lives of billions. This article is just another reminder of this. At scale that Meta operates, this algorithmically decided domain blockings mean nothing to them, but everything to hundred's of non-profits. There need to be legally mandated protections so things like this never happen again.

Would you be ok with the chinese or argentinian government running Alphabet or Meta? I don't think most government are better than any corporation.

Last time I checked, free access to education, care and protection against many abuses where provided by governmental organisms.

"government are better than any corporation" (or its reverse) means nothing if you don’t provide some specific topics and possible metrics to evaluate them.

Also, not all government and corporations behaves in the very same way.

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