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

simonbackx.com

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

#111

Post by pb7 »

wpietri wrote: post #93
rmah wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you risk everything to start a company only to be forced to give up most of it to other people? Why would others invest (i.e. buy stock) in your company only to give up control to non-owners?

Wait, so you're saying most entrepreneurs aren't creating new things just to change the world, to make a difference, to put a dent in the universe, to fulfill a deep vision, and/or because their team or their userbase is like a family? I find it hard to believe that VCs, would-be billionaires, and their extensive PR teams have been lying to us all these years.

Your snark lands flat because knowing that you will lose control of your company at an arbitrary point affects every single of one of those points listed. How will I fulfill my vision if the government will take over when it finally gains traction? Government isn't known for their execution. Well, only one type.

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

#112

Post by KIFulgore »

danpalmer wrote: post #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 eventuall…

At my last company, we had 12 identical Facebook apps working as service-to-service messaging integrations. They chose to have 12 apps due to data sovereignty reasons, separating implementations in different regions. For each permission we needed, we'd record screencasts of all 12 apps and explain how to verify the system works, then submit for App Review.

Usually about 4 would get approved, and the other 8 would be rejected. All for different reasons. Usually it was something about Facebook Login - which we didn't use as an S2S integration. It was maddening.

We'd make token changes to the rejected reviews, resubmit, then keep resubmitting until they were all approved. On occasion an App would keep going to the same stubborn reviewer and we'd contact our Partner Manager. They're nearly powerless to do anything, since the Safety and Review team is firewalled off from the rest of Meta to prevent outside influence.

Funny nuance: when in development mode, Apps can't receive webhook events for wall posts. Only webhooks for Messenger (DMs) are active. We were adding support to reply to wall posts, but couldn't test or demonstrate the feature because public post webhooks weren't available. "How do we proceed?" "Well, you need to use the fetch API to get posts in batch for Approval, then you can use webhooks." Thing is, our platform wasn't interested in pulling posts in batch. Just routing public posts in real-time via webhooks.

So, we built a completely separate App to pull posts in batch and got it approved. Then used a proxy to slingshot webhooks through that App to our platform, bypassing the under-review Apps altogether. And we got them all approved.

It's a joke that Meta tries to enforce policy at the application level vs. API for enterprise S2S integrations. Workarounds "faking" the experience are always possible.

I advised simplifying things by having a single proxy service distributing messages to different cloud regions based on the customer. Or maybe 3 proxy Apps - dev, US, and Germany, as simple middleware shims. But not 12 Apps. It fell on deaf ears. Since I left, I hear with Instagram support and more granular permissions on Messenger, they're submitting 60+ App Review submissions every quarter. With the resubmissions and petitions it's nearly full-time position.

If I ever took another position working with Meta, it would have to be "retire in 3 years" kind of money.

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

#113

Post by TomSwirly »

bluGill wrote: post #67
notacoward wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their support for paying clients is much better. Perhaps worth it in this situation, but isn't that basically paying protection money? "Nice domain you've got there. Shame if anything happened to it."

If you are using their services for something important you should pay for it. I use fastmail not gmail for this reason: email is too important for me to risk on an account I don't pay for. I don't pay for youtube, because I don't care if they go out of business. I probably would pay for facebook if possible (but only if they make it FACEbook - not political memes, offensive jokes, and cat pictures) as it is a good w…

> If you are using their services for something important

But they aren't.

Their URLs are simply blocked by Facebook, who happens to be a popular third-party website.

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

#115

Post by indymike »

polygamous_bat wrote: post #79
indymike wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, it depends on the governance obviously. Three reasons why nationalization is a bad idea: * Power disparity. As it is, Facebook is destroying people and business without any accountability. Now we hand that to the state who: * Has all the incentive to destroy anything that competes, and the government has the ultimate way to do it: just outlaw the competition. If you think the product is bad today, imagine how…

> the government has the ultimate way to do it: just outlaw the competition > So, it becomes oppressive and horrible and the government decides, hey, let's make everyone use this thing for essential services like payments and democracy These things can only fly in a non functioning democracy, which, while the US is coming dangerously close to, is not there yet.

> These things can only fly in a non functioning democracy, which, while the US is coming dangerously close to, is not there yet.

Most functioning democracies outlaw competing with the postal service - as the US has for centuries.

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

#116

Post by anderspitman »

It's worth remembering what the long-term solutions to these types of issues are.

For Facebook: decentralized social networks built on open protocols.

For the ISP: normalizing the use of VPNs (through a local server) for all internet traffic.

Yes there are tradeoffs. I'm personally happy to make them.

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

#117

Post by jherskovic »

danpalmer wrote: post #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 eventuall…

We removed "Sign in with Facebook" from our public learning management system (we provide content to the public) instead of continuing to jump through their insane requests and demands.

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

#118

Post by [deleted] »

danpalmer wrote: post #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 eventuall…

[deleted]

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

#119

Post by unity1001 »

indymike wrote: post #14
paintman252 wrote: post #2

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.

> No. Giving this additional power to the government will not have the outcome you want.

Giving more power to the government on INFRASTRUCTURE at this scale always gives the desired outcome everywhere arount the world except the US.

I stressed the word infrastructure. Because at this level, these companies are literally the gatekeepers of the Internet. Who control literally 70%-80% of what we see, hear and do among themselves. Especially when doing business as a small business, there is no way to avoid them. And they can make or break their business within a day with their arbitrary decisions.

Imagine that your local road network was owned by a private, unaccountable company that was able to change the traffic flow within one day at a whim. Literally breaking all the logistics of your small shop by causing it to be much more expensive. Or your local power company doing the same thing.

To avoid such things, we keep infrastructure in the hands of public companies or we VERY tightly regulate them. Allowing a society's infrastructure to be controlled by private actors is as crazy as it gets.

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

#120

Post by 998244353 »

simonbackx wrote: post #42
danpalmer wrote: post #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 eventuall…

There are so many stories like this, it is crazy! Thank you for sharing this.

One quite perplexing common theme is "thing gets flagged -> thing gets resolved by a human as a false positive or whatever -> two weeks later, thing gets flagged again with no change, presumably by an automated system".

If the flagging is done by a human, is there really no "case file" that records the previous flags and why they were false positives? If it is done by an automated system, why is it allowed to flag things that a human has already cleared with no change?

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